


Vultures

by Vronska



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Depression, M/M, McCree's backstory, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Racism, Ugh, also a bit of gency but you are free to ignore it, i don't know what else i can put in the tags, it's actually mccree getting all the angst this time i'm sorry, just assume they're good friends, no I mean it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-25 18:47:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12042009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vronska/pseuds/Vronska
Summary: The gunslinger fled across the desert and the archer followed, basically





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> I can't believe it came to publishing all of this bull- this  
> This isn't my first fanfiction ever written, but the first one written in English and actually published. You can't imagine how incredibly stressed I am now. I just. I am afraid to press the "publish" button no joke
> 
> This is a very important work for me, not gonna lie. Very personal as well. The only one I've ever written that has a beginning, a plot and (hopefully) an end. It may not be very long, the first chapter especially, but I was really trying my best, even tho it started as a work just to "vent"; There's a lot of my own emotions in here, I was actually writing it as some sort of a "therapy", even. It obviously didn't work, but I'm left with six and 3/4 chapters already written, which my friends want to see published. So here it is. Oh my god.
> 
> There's a lot of McCree-related angst in this work, for which I'm sorry, but I tried to focus on him and his backstory, making use of the lack of information Blizzard gives us. On the other hand, however, I tried to stay as close as possible to the sources that were already published or leaked (hence "gency" in the following chapters (but bear with me, you can ignore it, I promise this is just so slight) ) and tried not to get too deep into Hanzo (jesus how BAD this sentence is formulated) because There's enough overwhelming drama already. Maybe one day. One day I'll write well about Hanzo. But today is not that day. Today is McCree's day. Have fun.

It was a mistake.

Jesse knew it the very moment he opened his mouth in front of Winston; shouldn't have done that in the first place. A hasty decision, incompetent, even- He was being irresponsible and childish, he was-

A fool.

The names were spoken in his mind with a sharp, barking voice. A voice of a dragon, no less.

It was a mistake and he knew it when he was pulling his shit despite the scepticism of the scientist. Should've listen to him. Sit on his chapsed ass in Gibraltar base, sipping a glass of coke over terribly boring papers. But the desert let him hear its call.

The brief note about Deadlock activity west of the gorge had popped up on his comm roughly a week ago. At first he chosen to ignore it; he didn't want to be back there, didn't need to fuel his nightmares with the old gallows they wanted him to hang on. But he needed only an evening and a night to change his mind, half a day to convince Winston to let him do the job alone and half an hour to pack his things. It was completely automatic, the way he shoved few shirts into a vintage, worn-off marine bag- why he was still sporting this filthy thing having little-to-no contact with sea whatsoever he wasn't sure- years of practice and need to quickly disappear from one place and reappear in another. And so he did. Left the base completely alone that night, not seen by anybody. Only the comm in his ear reminding him about the mission. Everyone got the note, nobody knew the mission was already launched.

Dry gravel was cracking under his cowboy boots on the side of the road, spurs jingling.

He was walking hunched, curled into the red serape, hat pulled over his eyes to the point he could barely see. Chilly evening wind was blowing red dirt in his face. The cowboy spat.

Here he was again, doing Blackwatch job for recalled Overwatch. History making a perfect circle.

The mission took him three days to finish, him knowing the exact Deadlock tactics, and its members, now mostly bearded santas on outdated motorcycles. They recognised him ("I know this filthy hat" one of them said) and he recognised them; but only a few he knew by name. It took three days to shoot out those familiar faces and clean the mess afterwards- a perfect example of Blackwatch work.

It was a mistake.

After nearly five entirely sleepless nights, nonexistent forearm hurting like a devil, nightmares coming to him each time he closed his eyes and Angela denying him stronger sleeping pills, saying "I can't give you anything more if you keep swallowing  it with whisky" - he needed to be alone for a moment.

Of course he tried to keep his face on in front of the team. Once he nearly dozed off during dinner, pulled back in his chair with hat pulled over his eyes. He was quickly woke up by Hana and elbow in his ribs.

"You old man, missed your nap?"

He laughed with her, of course, but couldn't not notice worried look on Mercy's face from the other side of the table.

Coming back here in the condition he was now was probably the worst idea he could have. But it was the only possible option for him to be alone and far away from the team. From Hanzo.

He had to admit he liked the archer. Liked him a bit too much. Loved him, even, a tad platonically, a tad too forgiving, what he noticed only when being absolutely devastated by his pathetic misery.

The older Shimada was like a storm firmly closed into a stone; and he knew about it. When they were alone the Dragon was kind- they talked, once they smoked together, they competed on a shooting range and hell if he didn't make Hanzo laugh a few times. They kissed, too. But never went beyond that. On the other hand, however, when they were with others the archer seemed much more distant, colder; he occasionally showed some kindness to a cowboy, let him sit beside him, and such. He obviously didn't like public displays of affection and that was fine, what wasn't fine though was being insulted.

Jesse has been insulted before numerous times, purposefully or not, and he really doesn't give a fuck most of the time. Actually, those insults were usually so accurate he couldn't help but laugh. But he let it slide too, used to it to the point he didn't even notice.

What he wasn't used to though, was hearing being insulted behind his back. Especially when Hanzo was the one insulting him- thinking, probably, that nobody could understand him, since he was talking to Genji. But McCree heard his name, along with some Japanese slurs sharing a room with younger Shimada taught him, and he wasn't stupid. He could put two and two together.

He entered the kitchen then, interrupting them by nothing but his presence, casually put the dishes into the sink and left without a word. He could hear Hanzo calling, but he didn't bother to turn to him.

It took him a bit less than an hour to completely forgive the archer, but they haven't really spoken since then. Jesse left before the dawn the day after, leaving his personal comm and phone in the base, and Hanzo seemed to be avoiding him anyway.

Coming back here was a mistake, even though he never entered the gorge; he waited for the gang to leave using passages he been using twenty years ago. Still, the call of the desert kept ringing in his ears, loud, dry screech, rushing him into the mountains; he needed all his will to resist.

The cowboy sat down on a bench by the bus stop. For safety reasons (but was it safe, really- certainly not for him) the drop point was all the way in another state, roughly six hours by the bus. He could've chosen the train, but preferred not to. It was slowly getting dark, what meant it would  be terrible cold in a few hours. Riding on a train, since it was too expensive to afford travelling inside, would make him even more cold than was necessary. Anyway, after his last adventure with trains a bit more than six months earlier he'd prefer not to bash on another Talon squad again. He finished his cigarillo and threw the end on the ground, stepping on it. Then he rubbed left arm. It hurt.

He had no idea whether the pain was only a phantom or a real thing, caused by, for example, old, malfunctioning wires; he didn't know and wasn't sure if he wanted to.

The call of the desert was loud, ringing in his ears. Winston, bless his heart, was nice enough to let him report only every 40 minutes; and there he was, sitting alone in silence, cars passing by only once in a while. Jesse was looking blankly at the motel across the road. He started to feel familiar knot in his gut again.

Fire from his old zippo didn't even touch the second cig he had in his mouth when the bus stopped by. He groaned lightly, shoved both things in a pocket and hopped on a bus, bought the ticket and found quite a nice place by the window, throwing his bag on the next seat in a bit rude attempt to drag people away from the idea of sitting next to him. There weren't many of them anyway; just four men and three women, still enough to make him anxious. He pulled the hat on his face, as far as he could, and faced the window. Jesse watched the dull landscape shift slowly, despite the speed of the bus- not much to watch on the desert- and started to doze off, almost jumping on his seat and grabbing firmly Peacekeeper's grip every time he felt he's falling asleep. He couldn't. They were watching him. They knew. Posters with his face were hanging everywhere in all five southern states, along with his real name and prize for his head, big enough to buy half a country.

Under his hat he peeked around. No one even looked in his direction, or was paying attention to anything. Two men were talking, their voices buzzing, but nothing more. He loosen the grip on the gun covered by serape, his heart still pounding. He was being paranoid.

Stupid cowboy.

Fool.

_"Name, boy."_

_There was a silence after that, interrupted only by the clank of a chain between Jesse's handcuffs. His wrists were tightly chained to the table, and he was sitting there for a few hours already, getting impatient. He was hungry, thirsty and in pain, blood from the broken nose dripping on the floor tiles. He was also angry. And very, very scared. Glaring at the man that entered the room, he sniffed._

_A few of them been here before, but none managed to get any information from him. It wouldn't be different with this one._

_The one that actually caught him and held his head to the ground, his knee painfully pressing at Jesse's spine and dirt and sand getting into his dry mouth. That was the very same man._

_"Fuck off."_

_More silence._

_"Name."_

_"Gimme back my hat, pendejo!"_

_The man just sighed._

_"Name._

_"Clint Eastwood" Jesse rasped and spat on the floor. The man wrinkled his nose in disgust._

_"Real one, McCree."_

_Jesse jerked in his place, barely managing to stay on the chair he was sat on, bared his bloody teeth and managed to bark something in the range of "what"._

_The man stood as he did, not flinching a muscle._

_"Your vest, boy. You are literally tagged with your - I believe- last name on it. So what's the first?"_

_McCree was silent for a moment, glaring at the man with hate._

_"Alright." He came closer and leaned over the cowboy, who hunched up under his gaze, looking into his eyes "But let me tell you one thing. I am the bad cop. The good one sent you to prison the moment you were caught. I want to make a deal with you."_

_"Jesse" he muttered under his breath, but the man interrogating him shook his head._

_"What?"_

_"Jesse" he repeated, louder, and looked away, clenching his teeth "what's the deal?"_

_There was a fond "hm" from the man, he straighten up and left the room._

_When he got back he was holding McCree's old gun, a bottle of water and a toothbrush._

_"You killed eight of my very good soldiers today, boy; not bad, but you would be able to do it better, however, because this-" he spun the gun and threw it on the table, what made McCree growl "-is trash. A museum would be grateful for such a Colt - it's in very good shape, congratulations - but just as it can get you into trouble it can't get you out. What I offer you is any weapon of your choice" he smirked seeing Jesse's teary eyes lightening up "and, at least partial, freedom. You will not go to prison, you will work for me instead."_

_McCree smiled the most devilish smile he could manage._

_"Give me one revolver and I'll kill whoever you desire, give me two and you'll see the apocalypse."_

_"Easy with your promises, cowboy, but I'll take it. My name is Gabriel Reyes, commander of Blackwatch assets. You answer only to me. Speak only when asked. One, and remember that well, one act of insubordination, and you're landing behind the bars. Clear?"_

_"Yeah."_

_"This gun" he took the Colt from the table "is no longer yours. Clothes you can keep, but you'll get new ones when you done here. Closest meal from now is supper, but for god's sake, take a shower before you'll go eat. Now-" Reyes took the handcuff key from his pocket and freed Jesse, who immediately rubbed wrists "- you have two hours to make the floor shine with this. I'll see you spitting on the floor again, you will be doing it in every room you spat in, until you learn not to. Have fun."_

_Gabriel gave Jesse bottled water and a toothbrush, then left, locking the door from the outside._

_McCree never spat on the floor of the base again._

He woke up suddenly from the slumber, terrified by the fact he let himself doze off. Nearly an hour he spent curled by the window in this unpleasant, cold place a man is on the verge of sleep, once in a while reporting to Winston with a short "I'm heading back", and nothing more. When the bus stopped at a gas station he got off with relief and automatically reached for a cigarillo, but quickly remembered where he is.

_He could blow this place up in no time._

No, no he couldn't. What the hell was that thought anyway.

_Like father, like son._

What was he thinking, he never had a father. That must be the lack of sleep.

Knot in his guts. People looking at him. Pain in his arm. Screech of the desert in his ears.

He entered the store, bought two bottles of whisky, pack of cigarillos and gas to his lighter, some instant noodles and a bottle of water. At least he could pay for it now, even if only with Winston's money. Still, he felt overwhelming guilt.

Damn Ingrate.

He left the station, going by the already starting bus; crossed the road and walked into the desert, his breath shallow and heart beating rapidly. He walked fast, trying to hold his panic, pulling the comm out of his ear and stepping on it with a heel. The earpiece cracked and spur jingled, and he stood up to check if the chip bent enough to be completely useless.

If he knew something, it was how to disappear for good.

The sun was raising, sky as red as blood, livid mountains cutting out of it with sharp edges.

And he felt like he was going back home, and was homesick at the same time; for someone living on the run for most of his life, surviving on a trail was the most familiar thing he could think of. And he couldn't resist the urge to hide. In a moment he was like a wild animal hiding from the eyes of the hunters.

And so he walked, ran away, history making a perfect circle.

 

Ten minutes later, in the Gibraltar base, Winston noticed McCree's late.

When he checked the GPS, talking to Athena, realization shut his mouth in no time.

The cowboy has vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, so there it is, the first chapter  
>  ~~Wanna see how fast I'll take it down~~  
>  please don't hate me too much, English is not my first language and I'm not a writer, I'm an illustrator, I am pathetic, I'm so sorry  
> Huh, I may publish the second one in a week or two, depends on how well the writing would go. The majority of this work is already done, but i still have one and a half chapter to write, and I check every single one a few times before publishing, sometimes rewriting them, even, so, uh, yeah. I'm working on it completely alone and I'm very anxious and insecure about my english. and myself. and ah please kill me already.
> 
> I've drawn two illustrations for this fanfic, which you can find [here](http://vrronska.tumblr.com/post/165980963598/vultures-two-illustrations-for-the-fanfic-im)
> 
> also, if you have any inquiries, this is my  
> [tumblr](http://vrronska.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/vrronska)
> 
> please talk to me


	2. Chapter 2

For over five months now Hanzo had been waking up to the same white ceiling in the Gibraltar base, early in the morning. Each one of them was nearly identical. He got out of bed, watched the sunrise through the window for a minute or two, then went to the bathroom and got dressed. On his way to the kitchen, he passed by the common room, where, on the couch, his legs sticking out, laid  McCree. 

He was not always there, only from time to time. Sometimes asleep, sometimes not, but always with the tv turned on to some stupid late night program or the news. Hanzo turned off the tv when he heard the cowboy snoring, and if he didn't he just continued to the kitchen. He made himself some tea, and, if McCree was awake, he made him a cup of coffee as well.

Today wasn't much different, the sofa, however, was empty.

To be honest he hoped for it; he was still ashamed of what he had done the day before and preferred to avoid the cowboy until he'd be ready to actually apologize.

He had said a few words too much, and he didn't even mean them. It was all the fault of Genji's teasing; his brother wanted him to admit something he wasn't ready to admit even to himself. 

Normally he would just keep his mouth shut, but Genji was really irritating that day, and Hanzo was a bit pissed off already.

He liked McCree. He really did. There was something in him- familiar warmth, weird feeling of safety Hanzo had when he was around- that made him want to be near the cowboy as often as he could. And that was an awkward feeling, he has to admit that; he wasn't really sure how to express it. 

Their first, and so far the only kiss was nothing but a lost bet. Effect of Jesse's idiotic ideas- but Hanzo really did like it. They were very good friends, being pretty close with each other, the archer trusting the cowboy with his life not only in the battlefield. It was strange because he didn't really trust anyone. He spent the majority of his time by the gunslinger's side, much more than he did with Genji or any other member of the team. 

And Hanzo liked it too, despite the fact that, again, expressing it was too far over his abilities. He was regretting that, to be completely frank, but couldn't do anything about it. He didn't even try that hard, because if he would, the others would know about all this. They shouldn't, because it was only his matter, in the field where any of the Overwatch members, or anyone besides himself, should ever be allowed.

But the cowboy didn't show up on the breakfast as well, and that was quite alarming.

Hanzo wasn't the only one who noticed McCree's gone, and it was Tracer who brought this up. They were eating quite a huge breakfast made by Reinhardt, chatting as always, when Lena suddenly burst out a question.

"Where's McCree? He'll miss the bacon"

Everybody looked at the empty chair at once, and Hanzo noticed Winston flinched. The scientist cleaned his throat, fixed his glasses.

"I asked him for a favor" he said carefully, eyes of the team turning at him "he'll be back soon"

From across the table, Angela gave him The Look.

"What kind of 'favor' was that? Winston, if it was what I think it was... "

"Deadlock gorge, huh? The note" Reinhardt's voice made glasses tremble, and everyone suddenly went completely quiet. Genji and Mercy exchanged glances, and Torbjorn looked sharply at the gorilla, frowning.

"Do not play Morrison, Scientist. It won't end well"

"Why didn't you tell us?" Lena asked, making the gorilla sigh.

"I wanted it to be as discreet as possible..."

"But hiding this from us?"

There was no answer.

The silence was getting dense, the atmosphere thick; Winston was silent, and Hanzo once again was feeling like a complete stranger, alienated from everything and everyone in this room, listening to something he shouldn't be listening. But for the first time he knew he wasn't really alone in this feeling, Hana and Lucio looking in their plates, Mei awkwardly drinking her tea.

If it wasn't for Tracer intervention and her quick change of the subject, who knows what would have happened.

The whole day was bad, anyway. The tension in the air was obvious, and they weren't chatting as cheerfully as usual. 

When Hanzo went for a training in the afternoon and was passing by Winston's office, he again heard something he definitely shouldn't. He didn't want to eavesdrop and it was terrible of him he did so, but he was just passing by and the door wasn't completely closed, and...

"You shouldn't have done that, Winston."

Long shadows cast on the floor shifted, and Hanzo stopped, hearing Mercy's voice.

 "We are violating Petras Act as it is, we don't need any more trouble... What were you thinking? Sending him alone? Not informing us about it? "

"He came to me asking for it, Angela."

"Of course he did, he hasn't been really well recently"

Hanzo squinted. What was she talking about?

"He is a good agent. One of the best, he'll  manage. Not without any reason he was Reyes' right-hand man."

"Oh, great. Create a new Blackwatch here, then. Do what Reyes wanted to do, make him a new commander, watch everything fall to pieces when any problems occur. Even before Petras Blackwatch was suspended. For a reason."

"Angela, nobody here talked about recreating Blackwatch. No more organizations within organizations, it never ends well" Winston sighed "but the fact is that one of the reasons I let McCree go alone was, indeed, him being former Blackwatch. And former Deadlock. He's perfect for the job and you know it, alone or not, he will handle this just fine."

Hanzo didn't listen to the rest of the conversation. He quickly made his way to the shooting range, set the parameters and started the training.

After sixth missed shot, however, he put his bow aside with an annoyed groan. He couldn't focus at all. "Hasn't been well recently"? What does that mean, was McCree ill?

Well, even if he was it was not his business, he scolded himself. But what if it was because of his sometimes excessively rude behavior towards the cowboy?

 Even if so, it was still not his problem. He definitely should stop thinking about it. He heard too much and now faces the punishment; six missed shots was probably the worst he could get.

 

In the evening Hanzo went out. Sneaked out to the point on the cliff no one else could get and now he was leaning on a stone wall, smoking, looking at the lighthouse and letting the minutes pass, from time to time shaking ash from his fancy cigarette down the cliff. The weather was very nice, he had to admit that, the sound of the sea soothing; if it wasn't for sickening feeling in his stomach, he might've enjoyed it.

"He didn't leave because of you"

Hanzo didn't move; he knew when Genji came. 

"Who said this is the matter" He didn't even look at his brother, when the cyborg leaned on a wall next to him, in a very similar manner. Genji's visor blinked.

"I haven't seen you smoking since... Quite a long time" he looked at Hanzo "and you left the breakfast unusually early. And skipped dinner as well"

"I was practicing during dinner" Hanzo scoffed "and now I was enjoying my time here, alone. But you came, ruining it." 

"So what's with the smoking part? Wasting your time? It's not like you. Last time I've seen you with a cigarette was..."

"Listen, Genji- I am not a teenage girl to care whether a stupid, loud cowboy heard what I had to say about him, and I am allowed to smoke when I please."

"Well, sometimes you act like one. And you like him, everybody knows it"

Hanzo sighed heavily, putting out his cigarette and pinching the bridge of his nose.

"I do tolerate his annoying presence, mostly because I have to. Now I enjoy peace while it lasts"

Genji shook his head and crossed arms on the metal chest. He was silent for a moment.

"Why are you like this?" The question hung in the air, heavy silence prolonging  "why are you afraid to admit you like him? If not for his sake, at least for your own?"

"I am not afraid" Hanzo barked, straightening up, standing in front of his brother. Even a bit hunched, Genji still was a few inches taller. "What would father said to this? I have to take care–"

Genji's visor blinked again in surprise.

"Are you fucking serious, Hanzo? Father's long dead, so are the elders; our clan no longer exists. There's anyone to supervise you, and all you have to take care of is yourself"

Hanzo opened his mouth but closed them right away; for a brief moment his eyes softened, just to get cold again. He pointed at Genji.

"You never had any respect to the Shimada clan, brother. If you think I could get on with this... Terribly cheap Clint Eastwood ripoff..."

"Not only you could, but you are, Hanzo. You should finally take it as it is and tell him that you like him, because you're being quite unfair right now"

Hanzo leaned on the wall again and looked at the sea. 

"He is too kind"

"What?"

"I do not deserve such kindness" he turned his head away "There is no one who could love me for what I have done. You, of all people, should know it the best. "

"I do love you" Genji shrugged, slowly starting to leave "and I'm pretty sure McCree does as well. I talked to him, and I know him quite well. He may look like an idiot but he certainly isn't one, trust me"

Hanzo was left alone. He reached for another cigarette, but found the box empty; he groaned, but stayed outside for another hour, simply looking at the lighthouse and thinking.

 

"Dr. Ziegler."

Mercy turned to him, surprised. She smiled, but he felt a bit of uncertainty in this smile; she didn't trust him, still, that's for sure. But it was hard to blame her for it.

"Agent Hanzo, hello, do you need something?

"Can I ask a question?"

She simply nodded, pointing at the chair and sitting behind the desk. He sat as well.

"What seems to be the problem?"

He was silent for a minute. What was he even doing here, what a foolish idea was that- he considered faking some terrible headache for a second, but eventually spoke instead.

"You know McCree better than I do"

She raised her blonde eyebrows in surprise and shook her head.

"Agent Shimada, he's my patient and I can't-"

"I am not asking for his medical evidence, dr Ziegler, I am asking about him as a person"

She frowned. 

"He talks quite a lot about himself, and rather quite loudly; why do you want me to tell you anything?"

"He is telling fairy tales, dr Ziegler, and you know it" Hanzo wasn't even looking at her, deeply ashamed by what he was doing "and I do not care about lies of 'soon to be gunslinger more famous than Billy the Kid'. I want to know who Jesse McCree is, and you had been knowing him since the old Overwatch"

Mercy seemed troubled. She looked at him, thinking, knitting her fingers, and he started to wonder how long until she would kick him out.

"Why me, why won't you ask him instead? Or Genji? They- they were roommates for quite a time"

"Because McCree is absent. And I am sure he would not talk"

"I'm not really convinced I can do that either, then... Mister Shimada, have you ever actually tried to ask him in person?"

No. He didn't. Hanzo sighed; It would be harder than he expected.

"Do you know why... Why did he had left?"

"He's on a mission" she looked at him, frowning again.

"Alone?"

"Winston decided that would be tactically better. I am no one to judge."

Mercy's comm jingled. She looked at it with sheer relief and stood up, turning eyes to Hanzo.

"I'm sorry, agent Shimada, but Lucio needs my assistance"

She smiled again, the same uncertain smile, and left him without a chance to say goodbye.

She didn't ask him to come another time.

 

Hanzo thought about asking, too. Every single talk they had made Hanzo feel very awkward, since Genji that he spoke to wasn't the Genji he used to talk more than a decade ago. His brother became a collected adult, acting like an old Sparrow just from time to time. And as Hanzo dreamed of Genji acting like a responsible, mature human being his whole adolescence, now, having the opportunity to experience that, he would rather go back to his young untamed brother, stealing his Pokemon cards. But there was no way back and it scared him, just like the guilt he felt every time Genji was around.

And so he decided to let it go. It could wait for the gunslinger to return.

 

Winston gave the cowboy three hours to show up on the screens again. He thought of every possibility; eventually he had to give up. There was no trace of McCree anywhere, his last location a few hours ride from Santa Fe, in the middle of the desert, near the gas station. Nothing more.

He called the meeting soon after and watched the gathering team, eyes worried. He cleared his throat, silencing them, and thought of what to say for a moment. 

"All of you got the note about the reactivation of the Deadlock gang, as I recall"

They nodded. Winston knew some of them already knew why they were here.

"And all of you probably connected McCree's absence with it; I must admit it was correct, now officially. The 'favor' I asked him for- he was supposed to get the job done, as someone who was once... Very close with this gang, thus, knew them pretty well" he fixed his glasses and looked at their faces. They were surprisingly silent, Hanzo's look brutally screwing into his soul. He cleared his throat again and continued "he, indeed, managed to fulfill the assignment, and was already on his way back to the drop point... But he disappeared from the gps."

They burst out at once after a solid minute of complete silence. Only two of them was quiet; older Shimada, who was looking at him in a way Winston couldn't and didn't really want to know what it was- something bad, anyway; and Mercy, whose head dropped as she rubbed her face. They all shouted until Winston hit the table with a fist.

"It was supposed to be a discreet mission" he said "and I'd like it to stay that way. I already have picked the team" he looked around "Shimadas, Mercy and Tracer as a pilot should be enough"

"For how long he had been gone?" Tracer asked.

"A bit more than four hours"

Genji saw his brother clenching fists under the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we have some angry Handsoap  
> also the supportive Shimada Brothers that love eachother(tm) because i love it 
> 
> Now I'd like to address every single person that commented and left kudos under the last chapter! It was....... so........ unexpected.... i was super shocked how nice you all were, and I'd love to thank you for that! (it also made me a little bit anxious because i don't want to ruin your expectations hahah)  
> After receiving some Quality Hate on tumblr the other day I thought of leaving this, but your feedback kept me going (i also have four ready chapters, so it would be sad to leave this work only with one) 
> 
> again, this is my  
> [tumblr](http://vrronska.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/vrronska)
> 
> please talk to me


	3. Chapter 3

_"Morrison kicked you out again for smoking inside?"_

_"Hah, yeah"_

_Jesse was leaning on a concrete wall with a cig in his mouth. Gabe stood beside him, arms folded on his chest._

_The night was young, yellow lights of Zurich reflecting on the lake; cold, early-Spring wind freezing McCree to the bone, despite the fact he was wearing three layers of clothing, leather jacket included._

_He liked it here. Switzerland was so different from what the knew for his whole life, deserted, reddish plains and dusty streets of Santa Fe. Lake, forests, mountains; all of that had colours cold and vivid he could only dream of. The air was so fresh he almost felt bad for smoking._

_"How's it, anyway? Did Jack-"_

_"He ostentatiously ignored me when I said 'good mornin' ' to him today" Jesse breathed out smoke from his mouth "again"_

_Gabe sighed._

_"Maybe he just didn't notice, he's got a lot of work these days"_

_"I said it right into his face"_

_"Rude."_

_For a moment the cowboy looked like he wanted to spit into the dark grass, but eventually just sniffed. He remembered the lesson; last time he spat on the floor, a solid year ago in the base near Route 66 where he was brought after miserably failed Deadlock action, Reyes made him clean the whole floor with a toothbrush and a bottle of water. Pathetic as it was, it was still better than a life in prison._

_And now they stood there, in the Overwatch headquarters, arm to arm, and they laughed at their own inner jokes. He trusted his boss with his life, was faithful enough others called him "Reyes' dog" since some of them never really liked him. Funny, if he thought about that._

_Pale sunlight didn't do much to  pitch black of the diner's coffee, probably the worst beverage he could get in the state of Texas. He was sitting by the bar, legs dangling from the stool, thinking whether to eat something or not; if not for the coffee, he rather enjoyed himself._

_Early morning was pleasant, world around him peaceful. Moments like this, however, are the most dangerous ones._

_The cowboy initially didn't notice the sound of news from the oldschool tv hanging above the bar in the corner. He looked at it only when someone turned up the volume._

_Above the red "breaking news" banner he saw barely anything but smoke and occasional flames among the grey debris._

_Below the banner subtitle said "Zürich Overwatch headquarters explodes". Jesse felt cold sweat on his entire body._

_"- ns of the explosion are unknown, so are the casualties" words of the presenter made the cowboy severely nauseous "but we know that Overwatch leader, strike commander Morrison, was present-"_

_He threw five dollar bill on the counter and ran through the door._

_Chunks of concrete was hurting his flesh hand, palm bleeding, when he was kneeling on the debris, digging. Tears ran down his face when he was throwing away pieces of something that once was a steel grey façade of the headquarters. Or the walls of Mercy's office. Or the floor of his own room._

_"Boss!"_

_The rubble was still hot from the fire, bent wires and cables were burning his hands, reaping the shirt on his arms, dust clogging his nose and throat._

_"Reyes!"_

_Hard, white light was cutting through the night, making his own bloodstains black in the shadow he was casting on them._

_It was his fault. It was all his fault._

_"Gabe!"_

_He was digging, and digging, and digging, throwing away pieces of concrete and handfuls of dirt, but seemed to be in the same exact place all the time. His work was completely useless._

_He threw his head up when he heard dog barking. He saw a few torch lights between the dark pine trees, his vision blurred by tears, enough to make him run away. There was a gunshot._

He woke up in a cold sweat, tangled in the serape, damp hair stick to his face. He jerked so violently his head slipped from the bag and hit the cold, dry stone he was  lying on, gravel hurting his temple. 

He sat up immediately, alerted, tense to the point of physical pain. 

His perception and- no doubt- eagle eye was all he had. His hearing was already dulled by constant gunshots, wouldn't be able to caught someone silent and sneaky enough. He looked around, clutching to a Peacekeeper's handle.

In the night, there was nothing.

He felt the terrible cold only a while later, when the adrenaline wore off. He curled under the serape, damp wool barely warm, and reached to his bag. The bottles inside clattered; he took one out, opened it and took a long sip. The alcohol made his throat burn, helped to not freeze completely, although he was still trembling. He took another sip, swallowed thickly, and immediately lighted a cigarillo to cover up how nauseous he was. 

Flickering fire from his lighter threw a pale orange light on the rocks around him. For a brief moment however; he shut the zippo the same moment his cig caught on fire. He was on the relatively open space, the canyon he stopped at was rather tiny and long dried out, every blink of light visible.

He was smoking fast, siping the tobacco with whiskey, still sick to the stomach; he couldn't let them see him. He was trembling, his breath producing not only smoke, but clouds of steam as well.

He had never dug in the debris of Swiss Headquarters. 

He was there, that he could recall; but the terrain was surrounded with police tapes, halogen lights bright and hurting his eyes, police and army everywhere around. And he was young, already wanted and afraid. 

He has no memory of how he got from Texas to Zurich, or what the news said about the explosion. He had to admit he didn't remember quite a few moments from his life, and filling the gaps with fancy stories was the best he could do. He had always been good with stories. 

His cig has ended, and so did his distraction. A bottle of whiskey, now a bit more than a half empty, was lying beside him, and he nearly broke it when he was crawling to the edge of the canyon. He threw up twice, then he coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his forearm. After that, he backed off and laid head on the bag.

He was aware of in how terrible condition he was by now, and he knew well he needed sleep. He closed his eyes, still cold and unable to make himself any warmer.

_He saw nothing but fire._

_Flames licking blue, clear New Mexico sky, clouds of grey smoke making his eyes watery, screech of animals filling his ears._

_Too big hat was falling on his face so he clutched it, pressing it to his chest, unable to move._

_Panic. Sheer panic._

_It was his home. There was his ma inside._

_He tried to get closer to the wall of fire, he tried to do something, but terrible wave of heat made him keep his distance._

_There was a dreadful, loud crack of burnt wood, a scream, a cloud of sparks rising into the air, and Jesse felt a broad arm curling around his arms. He violently slipped out the handle and ran forward, not minding the fire or the desert or anything. He was just running away, leaving everything behind, like he always did, when something suddenly caught his ankle._

_He wasn't sure whether it was a root or a hand, but he tripped and, while falling, very clearly heard a shot from a sniper rifle._

_"You are a good shot, boy, but you must remember that it's not the pace of pulling the trigger that makes you great. It's the awareness of when not to."_

_He landed headfirst in the gravestone of Ana Amari._

His eyes snapped open, and he realised his head is again on the ground. Droplets of cold sweat and unnaturally hot tears were running down his face. He sat up  heavily and rubbed it, panting quickly and shallowly, unable to take a proper breath. Taking the whiskey bottle with violently  shaking hands, it took him a solid while to put it back into his bag.

No more sleeping tonight.

He curled tightly into the red serape and put the hat on his head. He took the bag and tried to stand up. His trembling legs refused to obey, and he stumbled, hitting and grabbing to a stone wall beside him, to not fall down the canyon. 

The first rays of sunshine were visible behind the dark mountains. Jesse should get there in the evening, if his legs would stop feeling so weak and his head would stop spinning, or if he just push himself to the limits.

He will get there, he has to. He's the lucky cowboy, after all. He always gets away from bad situations.

Crickets were loud that night. There was something soothing in this sound, but also quite unnerving, since he couldn't hear much more. If someone sneaked behind him...

Clutching Peacekeeper in pathetically trembling hand, squinting swollen eyes to see something in pale cockcrow light, he turned his head so fast he nearly fell. 

And again, there was nobody.

And again, he was being paranoid.

He felt another panic attack clutching his throat, making his breathing hard, his stomach dropping.

Very unsurely he put Peacekeeper into the holster, and ran forward, as fast as he could on weak legs, until he found himself in the middle of the desert. Mountains rose above him, but so did the sun, freezing cold yielding to unbearable heat. 

McCree groaned, knees bending under his weight, and he collapsed on the cracked soil, panting hoarsely. 

He hadn't been that bad for months.  

 Hell, even when he was it was never for that long. The crisis lasted usually a few days, not more. And now it was nearly two weeks. He was tired.

He clenched left fist, feeling the pain in the entire arm, radiating to his chest. He sat up and took long swig from the whisky bottle, not sure he's drunk already or not. 

First of all, he was terribly afraid.

Alone on the desert, afraid that he's losing his mind. Hopeless and extremely disgusted by himself that he let all of that happen.

What a pathetic cowardice.

He stood up and moved forward, making steps with ungodly effort. But there he was. In the mountains that he knew too well, hungry, thirsty, barely walking up the hill. 

There was a cave, two hours walk from where he was. He was going to get there, to the only place he could stay for the night, feeling just a tiny bit of comfort. He knew that cave. He was hiding there after he ran away from old Overwatch.

History made a perfect circle.

He was a disgusting coward, always running away, always leaving the mess behind. And each time he left, the tragedy happened, and someone of great importance for him died. 

He suddenly felt sick again, panic making him think straight.

He had to get back to Gibraltar. He'll get some rest that night and he'll get back, now, immediately. Because something's gonna happen, and that would be his fault.

He was getting old. His luck was running out.

Up above, the sun made its way to the middle of the sky. 

It was high noon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god, I'm so terribly sorry for being more than a week late, a lot of shit during that time happened and i was generally overwhelmed by life, and my shit is close enough to mccree's shit to opt for staying away from it for a while  
> I'm also sorry if i missed any errors here, as I said, I posted it almost in its raw form. I'm a piece of trash, jfc
> 
> as always, this is my  
> [tumblr](http://vrronska.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/vrronska)  
> please talk to me


	4. Chapter 4

Clouds were shifting beneath him like a stormy ocean when Hanzo leaned on the window, looking at the darkening sky. The shuttle just flatten out, and he was tired of constant sitting, especially that Genji and Mercy were playing cards by the table and he had absolutely no intend to interrupt them. They liked each other, and a tiny sting of envy was picking him every time he saw them together. Genji always had a lot of friends, unlike Hanzo, but for the longest time, he and Genji were best friends, despite dramatically different characters. As the more collected brother, he was the one to pick up dead drunk Genji from parties so he didn't have to deal with father's men, hold him when he was throwing up to the trash can, tell their father lies about his brother roundabouts. Although he didn't like his lifestyle, and, once again, envied him clearly being father's favorite and the fact that Genji could do way more fun things than he could, he loved his little brother. He still did. And one of the most painful thoughts he had, hidden far behind the guilt and sorrow, was that their relations would never, ever be the same as they used to be. There was no one equally nice to him as Genji was, unless...

Warm amber eyes of the cowboy stared at him in his mind and he sighed, irritated. Weird eyes they were, he had to admit that, dog-like honest and eagle-like sharp at the same time. He never looked directly into them, intimidated by their brightness, afraid the cowboy may see something in him that he wouldn't like. 

Like there was anything to like in him at all in the first place. 

The sky became completely dark, stars shining like a glitter scattered across Prussian blue ink. He looked at it, wandering off, trying to find any familiar constellations, take his mind away from the cowboy for a moment. He gave up after a while, though, a bit confused by the perspective. He probably needed some sleep.

"Are you worried, brother?"

Upon hearing Genji's voice he reacted with rather loud "wsh" and an eye roll quicker than he proceeded what was the question about. Actually, maybe that was for better; he didn't need the teasing right now.

Genji stood next to him, his mask taken off; another pair of eyes, the warm grey ones, that Hanzo was afraid of.  He turned his head away; he wasn't able to look at his brother's face. Genji apparently decided to ignore both actions.

"I know I am."

Hanzo looked behind his shoulder. Angela was gone.

"And why is that? Did the stupid cowboy is not responsible enough to take care of himself in his own country?"

Metal clanked when Genji crossed arms on his chest.

"You should seriously stop that" Hanzo could almost  _hear_  his brother is frowning "I reckon this is a weird coping mechanism of yours, Hanzo, but it never helped anybody, including yourself" still not getting an answer, Genji carried on. "He would never leave like this, without half a word, not if he was leaving willingly."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that something happened on the desert, and McCree may be long dead by now."

"Bullshit" Hanzo barked, a bit too fast and a bit too loud "he is not someone who would let that happen."

At least, he hoped he isn't. The gunslinger was like an open book, with his honest face and welcoming attitude, but it was a book written in language Hanzo did not understand in any way. It was like staring on ancient hieroglyphs, turning pages, from time to time getting to a bright, western-themed and not completely realistic illustration. 

"When we get there" he said, quieter, still not looking at Genji but seeing his reflection in the window "I want to go look for him alone."

"You can't." Genji said it in a neutral tone, gently, even. His reflection shifted and moved closer "it's dangerous, and the desert is enormous. All four of us will have problems with-"

"I owe him" 

"This is terribly bad idea"

"I owe him" he repeated, tougher, and sighed "I worked alone for nearly ten years. I know how to make it work. I know the methods to find him. And I will do way better without a tail" Genji looked at him, worried, but he just continued "and Winston wanted it all to be "discreet". How could it be so with a cyborg, winged lady and a girl who technically travels in time?"

"I'm still not entirely convinced"  

This time Hanzo did turn his head, visibly annoyed.

"What do you want me to say, then?" He snapped, finally looking at Genji's face and immediately regretting it "that I am, indeed, worried? Or that I feel going after McCree alone is the right thing to do after how I have acted towards him?"

Genji was silent for a long moment. So was Hanzo, suddenly ashamed of what he said. The amount of weakness he had shown in those two sentences will do for the next ten years.

"You'll not go alone" Genji finally spoke, still uncertain "but we will need to split, eventually. The desert's huge, and we don't have any clues on where he could be"

Hanzo nodded.

 

A few hours later they all sat at the table, excluding Tracer who was landing the shuttle and joined them a bit later. Forty minutes it took them to come up with any plan, but they eventually stayed with the splitting idea. They made a briefing and told Hanzo to call for them when any problems occur and contacting them at all times. They knew what to do and Hanzo was ready to go at any given moment, so, in the morning, he did.

They landed on a desert, a few miles from the city, pretty well hidden among the hills. When he stepped out the shuttle the first thing he noticed was how warm it was outside, despite it being only seven in the morning. He had roughly a two hours long walk to get to the city since any public transport didn't cover the area. And so he walked.

Santa Fe got severely damaged during the Crisis - he was informed through his comm when he passed through the enormous omnic cemetery, ruins of the city and metal parts of the robots eaten by the desert - and now was only a tiny fraction of what it was before, turning more into a town.

It was easier to start there, since McCree disappeared into thin air on a road from Santa Fe, where he was, to Denver where he never got.

It was more than ten hours ago.

On this thought, Hanzo started to walk faster. The probability of finding the cowboy alive was getting smaller as the time passed, and the awareness of it alone made him cold. 

He was occasionally chatting with the team as he walked, slowly getting to areas inhabited by humans, weather becoming more and more unbearable. It was nearly nine, but the air was hot and heavy, and so was the wind. Hanzo felt like he was trapped in a car parked in a sunny lot for several hours, with a heating on blowing right into his face. It was a pretty disgusting feeling.

Car heating, however, would not blow dirt into his mouth, nose and eyes, and the desert wind sure did. He had a hard time resisting an urge to spit, and when he reached to fix his hair be got nearly burned by it. God damn it. In this circumstances cowboy hat seemed like a pretty smart idea.

The suburbs looked more or less like the ones he had seen in American movies; it got weirder and weirder the closer to the city center he got. He had never seen anything like that before, whole city center looking like a strange mashup of seventeenth-century colonial buildings and native dwellings, making cars on the street horribly out of place. There was some modern architecture too, huge constructions made of glass and steel shining in the sun. Everything there looked out of place, actually, and even McCree - despite being aesthetically closer to the architecture - wouldn't completely fit there. He walked further away, again to the outskirts, closer to the point the cowboy was last seen.

Hanzo suddenly stopped. Jesse McCree was looking at him from under his hat at this very moment, cigarillo in his mouth, teeth bared in a vicious smirk.

The poster in front of him was big, what was quite unnerving, considering it was presenting the face of a wanted man, labeled with his own real name. It was literally saying "Jesse McCree", not any of his aliases.

And then he saw the reward.

Hanzo felt cold despite the weather. It took him quite a while to process what he read- and then he read it again, counting zeros to be certain.

Sixty million dollars. Whole, round sixty million. What the hell you have to do, to make authorities pay that amount of money for your head? 

His ragged cowboy was worth more than the castle in Hanamura. In fact, he could buy two castles for that, and yet he'd be able to afford a car, too.

 It meant nothing good. Especially that the poster-of course they'd gone full western here- said that he was wanted dead or alive. Genji was right. Jesse McCree could be long dead by now.

For some reason he felt overwhelming anger, making him clench his fists and teeth. He ripped the poster off the wall, crumpled it into a ball and tossed into the nearest trash can, maybe a bit too aggressively. He did the same with the next poster he saw. And the other. There was a lot of them, what only made him more anxious than he already was. 

What kind of idiot McCree must have been to purposefully come to a place where he was hunted for that amount of money? It was irresponsible, foolish, absolutely reckless, and he...

He was worried, more than before, and angry at the cowboy, at people who set the hunt for him, and at himself for making McCree leave. He missed him. Something he will never admit aloud.

"Agent Shimada?"

His earpiece crackled and he heard Tracer's voice in it. She stayed on the shuttle, monitoring the gps in case something showed up.

"Yes?"

"There's... Some sort of bar nearby your location, the type in which bikers hang out in American films, rather a nasty place-"

"To the point, Tracer"

"Oh, so McCree had been seen there, just before he left for the bus. You can ask about him there... I'm gonna send you the coordinates, you're the closest one to it"

He heard the ping of the comm and when he looked at it gps showed him the way to the bar. He hummed, following the way until, indeed, he saw the building tracer was talking about. 

It was a crowded place, ugly too, smelling like warm alcohol and tens of sweaty men inside who were wearing leather jackets despite the awful heat. He entered, maneuvering between men, feeling their eyes on himself. They were looking at him, of course they were, considering he had Stormbow on his back. He was looking like a foreign mercenary, just as he intended; they all should know who they are dealing with.

He wanted to ask the barman some questions, but on the way to the bar he saw another McCree's face looking at him from the back door. He went in that direction, angrier than before; there were bullet holes and darts sticking out of the poster.

 _He had been seen there_ , he recalled. What a fucking idiot. 

In the back of the bar, between the trash cans, there were several men sitting and drinking. They suddenly quit talking and stared at Hanzo when he approached the poster, and looking straight into it he took one dart out of McCree's eyeball. 

One of the guys whistled.

Hanzo side-eyed at him, curling the hand with a dart into a fist, ready to throw it in the face of any of them. 

"Hanzo? You got something?"

He ignored Genji in his earpiece, still looking at the whistler, motionless. The tension was so heavy in the air the whole bar seemed to be quiet. Or maybe it was just him.

"Hanzo?"

The whistler kept looking in his eyes.

"Well, even Samurai Jack himself fatigued himself to find our carcass... You speak English, Chinaman?"

The last sentence was spoken slowly, overly clear, like he was talking to someone incredibly dumb. Some of the men chuckled.

Hanzo needed all his will to swallow the anger telling him to throw the dart into whistler's eye and snap his neck in half, spitting on his dead body. He clenched his teeth so hard he heard a silent crack, and turned to him, straightening up. He touched his earpiece ever so slightly and discreetly as he could, talking both to the whistler and Genji.

"I do."

They were bounty hunters, no doubt; and since McCree was "their carcass" as they referred to him- another thing that makes him tremble of anger - it was not the first time they were after him. And maybe that was his chance. 

He made a step forward and didn't flinch under about five guns aimed at him, that suddenly appeared. The whistler- their boss, probably - stood up, and came close to him. 

"What do ya want here, jap? Sixty million dollars is already ours, and don't even try..."

"I can help you."

The boss stood, startled. Hanzo continued, choosing to ignore the slurs as long as he has to, for McCree's sake. Disgusting, having his pride butchered because of the dumb cowboy.

"This is not the first time you are after this wanted man, I can tell. Previous hunts were unsuccessful. I can change that"

The whistler hummed, looking at him suspiciously.

"Yer a mercenary?"

"Of sorts."

"How much do you want?"

"Less than ten percent."

"I can offer you five."

They shook hands. He had a long faded Deadlock tattoo on his forearm. 

"Fine. This is a personal matter, money is unimportant."

The whistler whistled again and chuckled, looking around. 

"Personal matter" he laughed jeeringly "what did he do, killed your mother?"

Hanzo frowned, and, locking his gaze in the eyes of the whistler, threw the dart into a shot glass standing alone on the plastic table. It shattered the glass and nearly stuck in the countertop, cutting bounty hunters' mockery almost instantly.

"I strongly suggest you minding your own business, 'partner'."

He was surprised how calm he acted despite the boiling rage inside him. The dragons were angry. He was furious.

After a moment of silence, the whistler exhaled loudly. 

"We're leaving in half an hour. You may want to get some water, jap- damn old drunkard probably ran into the desert."

He nodded and indeed went to buy four bottles of water. Then he closed himself in the toilet, leaned on the door and took out his comm. Genji was trying to contact him four times already, so he quickly wrote him a message in Japanese.

_"I found some bounty hunters. They will lead me to McCree, or at least to his trace. I will be contacting you about this-but only through here and only like this, it's safer"_

Slipping the comm into the bag he returned to the small gathering around the trash cans.

"Have you ever tried to find him before, Legolas?" asked one of the bounty hunters, not the whistling one "because we did."

"No." He didn't have to. McCree was always where he needed him the most.

"So y'have no idea what yer up too" he spat on the ground "most of us started the hunt around five years ago. Benny - he nodded to the whistler, who stood in the open door - even earlier, when price for the Carcass' head was lower than it is now"

"Motherfucker's like a fucking cryptid" added another one "like some sort of a desert Wendigo or somethin'. Nobody really knows if he's real, or the government is fucking with us"

Hanzo would laugh if he wouldn't be so angry. Not only it was a ridiculous amount of the word "fuck" to use in two sentences, they both were terrible. He had to pass it on to Jesse, he'd like them.

If he ever sees him again, he thought, the knot of anxiety twisting in his stomach.

"Most of us who went alone for him, and actually saw him, never got back to tell the tale" The whistler, or Benny, stepped outside and looked at Hanzo "that's why we are going all together now. Jesse McCree is real- otherwise the government wouldn't set a prize for him-and we're gonna find him. And kill him, 'cause I'm sure as hell he isn't one to get captured"

"He was last seen near the gas station north-west of here" said Hanzo, carefully. 

Benny looked at him.

"Good. We're movin'!" He swung his hand, causing all the bounty hunters to raise and go to the exit. He looked at the archer. 

"If this is some kind of a game-"

"It is not."

"I don't know why are you doing this, jap. I'm not sure I trust you"

"You should not. But I can assure you our goal is the same. We both want the cowboy- I do not care about anything else. You can use my fighting skills, since I am an excellent sniper, and you want McCree dead. I can use your knowledge about the surroundings to find him. I think this would be beneficial for us both."

"If you don't want the money, what is it? What do you want?"

"You can take the body. I want the cowboy's head."

Benny exhaled through his nose and let Hanzo go.

"Very well."

And so they went. It was near the outskirts of the city when Hanzo heard ping of the comm- message from Genji, probably. Even though he really wanted to, he couldn't read it, not between those men, even it was most likely in Japanese. It had to wait, despite the urge he felt to talk to Genji about McCree. A number of questions he had risen the further he was going, and he felt more and more anxious.   He caught himself thinking. He caught himself actually caring, a knot of worry tightening in his stomach. 

_He hasn't been really well recently._

_He would never leave like this._

_Damned old drunkard._

McCree does never seem to Hanzo like a man with a lot of problems troubling him. Maybe that was the thing that irritated him the most: the carelessness, cheerfulness, overall friendliness he would never be able to perform himself. If there was one word the could describe the cowboy with, it definitely was "warmth".

But now he started to question it all. McCree's reality suddenly started to seem much darker- and it shook Hanzo deeply. He felt like he was looking for a stranger, not a man he became ridiculously close with during this few months he had known him. 

Deep, deep inside he felt guilty for not noticing that something bad was happening, for acting like he doesn't care, for calling the gunslinger names he didn't deserve only to keep his face in front of Genji, who knew everything anyway. What happened happened and there was no turning back now. There wouldn't be a point - he will act just exactly the same when they find McCree and get back to Gibraltar. He just didn't know any better. 

"Pity ya want his head specifically, jap" 

Benny's voice brought Hanzo back to reality. He frowned.

"Fucker's been always destined for a noose, but..."

"You'll find a way to hang his body without the head" 

Benny shrugged.

They walked for quite a time in the awful heat, and Hanzo dried out two of his water bottles before he saw a gas station on the horizon.

In the shaking air the frail building looked like a mirage in the middle of the desert. 

But they finally had a clue. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah, here we are, with another Hanzo chapter
> 
> I'm sick and on a leave, so instead of sailing on the deep waters of education I had some time to post a chapter :D  
> Actually, every time i post i got some anon hate on tumblr for what i'm writing. It became a thing. Fascinating.  
> I won't be posting next week, though- We're in the exact middle of this fanfic, and the last chapter isn't even halfway ready. I feel like a failure.  
> on the other hand, i changed one tiny detail in the first chapter, so the timestamps would be more fitting. Also, I hope this is obvious, but every time Shimada brothers talk to each other they do it in Japanese; i didn't marked it in the text in any way, but one of the unpublished hate asks contained accusations that i made them speak english.... i really don't, I just assumed it's obvious they actually speak in their native language. I'm sorry if it was misleading or something, I didn't mean to offend anyone  
> I'm working on a simple illustration for this chapter (drawing things to your own fanfic is a higher level of being pathetic haha) and it should be posted tomorrow. If ever, ugh  
> Also! A very imporTUNT THING!! I read every single comment and I appreciate every single comment and I love you all and I swear I will answer to all the comments i left unanswered!!! one day!!! I prO MIS E
> 
> again, this is my  
> [tumblr](http://vrronska.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/vrronska)
> 
> please talk to me


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vague torture & suicide attempt descriptions in this chapter, sorry

The cave was higher than he remembered.

Or maybe it was just him feeling worse, rocks looking like mountains he would never be able to climb. He tried anyway, slowly, eyes fixed on the rock shelf he was getting to. He wasn't really climbing- he was crawling, head spinning, barely able to hold on his feet. He was thirsty, but the only bottle of water he had was emptying pretty quickly, and he already left one of the whisky bottles on his way, dried out. He wasn't really sure if he's dehydrated or just drunk, though it probably was both. He could barely see, eyes dry and painful. 

The sun was slowly setting, and he was only a bit past the middle of the hill when suddenly a small rock and a handful of gravel slipped from under his boot. He collapsed, sled down, felt pain in the knee; when he found himself lying on the ground, slowly understanding what just happened, he closed his eyes. 

The pain in his head was pounding as fast as his heart. He could barely think.

But he had to make it to the cave. To the safe place. To any place. He had to be somewhere. Somewhere else than on the ground, in the desert; but his leg hurt. His knee hurt and he was too weak to move, to stand up. He was useless, like a racehorse with a broken leg. And there's only one thing you do with such horses.

He pulled Peacekeeper from the holster slowly, but without hesitation. He wanted this nightmare to end. He wanted to get rid of himself, of all the thoughts, all the dreams, the memories he didn't remember but had to witness while he was sleeping, only to forget them again. He wanted to kill his demons, and there was only one way to do it.

Revolver's hammer clicked, pulled back, the sound unnaturally loud in his ears. 

It wasn't the first time he tried to do this. He wanted it to be the last, though.

But they will find him.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, from under all of this pathetic misery, old, real Jesse was screaming it.

They will find him. They will collect the prize.

Nobody will ever claim they captured Jesse McCree. 

He had to get to a cave. The hammer clicked for the second time, Peacekeeper went back to his holster. He started to crawl up again, slower, but pushing himself as he could.

He felt nothing but overwhelming hopelessness and fear. What was happening to him was way worse than dying, he was closed in a cage without any doors, deprived of the luxury of taking his own life and ending it once and for all. He was afraid that he was losing his mind, afraid of who he had become and what he might yet become. 

What he definitely was losing right now, however, was consciousness. Red and black was flashing before his eyes, and he heard a dull coyote howl in an unnervingly close distance. They sniffed out the smell of approaching death. He would have to set a bonfire to keep them away.

His destination was close. He could see the rock shelf he was climbing to- and he was barely able to lift his head. Now he was truly crawling- and knew that the end is near, in one way of another. He was aware of his condition, that he's terribly dehydrated, feverish and despite he was starving, he didn't want to eat at all. He was still nauseous.

"What have you done to yourself, kid?"

He lifted his head so fast it spin and his neck cracked.

On the shelf, with his legs dangling, was sitting Gabriel Reyes, not even a day older than when McCree had seen him for the last time.

Jesse nearly throw up.

He wanted to do something, he really did; but he was just frozen in place, grabbing to dirt and stones, cold, unable to move, or to speak. He was shaking violently.

"Come on, boy, really? Sixty million? You're worth way more than that."

McCree's tongue was swollen and dry, when he tried to speak. That had to be hallucinations, everyone in the desert has them. Especially when they have fever and are on the verge of passing out.

"Dead men don't talk, boss"

He felt blood in his mouth when he was moving dry lips, and he was surprised how much energy it took to blurt out this short sentence, his voice raspy and barely audible, impossible for Gabriel to hear. 

Yet somehow he did.

"Is that so, Ingrate? Is that so?"

He leaned forward, closer to McCree's face, slowly fading into black mist.

"Is running away only thing you do good, Jesse? You're a fucking disgrace, and you know it. How pathetic is it, to visit my grave every year? To make me a shrine every November? Writing me letters I'll never be able to read? Does it make you feel better? Less guilty?"

The cowboy closed his eyes, panic crawling to his chest.

"No."

He wanted to form a proper apology. Something that would cover how sorry he was. But he couldn't speak, and when he opened his eyes Reyes was gone. 

He needed a lot of time to move again. He puked, but had absolutely nothing to throw up, he wanted to cry, but had no tears whatsoever. There was nothing to sweat with, either. 

When he reached the shelf with a cave, he didn't let himself rest. He gathered sticks and dry grass and roots, put it in the circle made of rocks that were left quite untouched since he had last been here and took off his bag, serape, and the chest plate. He lied on the ground near the fireplace to be, close to the opening of a cave, on his belly, head on the bag and covered himself with the serape. He was trembling and barely alive, but for the first time in quite a long timespan he felt a tiny bit safer. 

Exhaustion soon got him as he was, when he just barely closed his eyes. And he regretted it again.

_The interrogation room he was standing in was one of the smallest in the Blackwatch quarters. It had white tiles on the floor and walls of the bare concrete, everything lit with white, halogen lights. One of them was blinking, making electric sounds. It was quite a horror-like setting, McCree had to admit that. The blinking lamp was irritating, and was pissing him off quite badly, and the captive didn't really want to talk. It was a pity, considering both Reyes and Morrison wanted answers, and they were watching them through the one-way mirror in the wall, Gabriel giving him orders through the earpiece._

_The prisoner guggled when Jesse poured ice cold water right into his face._

_"Ya'd better start talkin', pardner, for yer own good"_

_The man's hands and legs were tied to a slightly tilted table. There was, now soaking wet, cloth on his face, so he couldn't really take a breath and also see McCree, who was chewing on his cig with a rather unamused expression, yellow bucket in his hands._

_He was getting tired. The captive was a stubborn asshole, and he sincerely hated this room, looking closer to a butchery than military organization facility. He hated this job no less, but there was no one else around to do it. Overwatch was a show-off. Blackwatch was the ones to get their hands dirty. "Enhanced interrogation techniques" they called it- it was nothing but a pure torture, however._

_"Wash his head one more time, boy"_

_Reyes' voice was just as tired as his own. He filled the bucket with more water from the faucet in the wall, ignored the panicked sounds from the prisoner, who already knew what was going on and begged McCree to stop, and spouted generously onto his face. The captive screamed, jerked on the board, making sounds dangerously close to the ones made by someone who is drowning. He wasn't drowning, however, and Jesse knew that; the water will never get into his lungs._

_"Talk."_

_"Fuck you."_

_"Gimme the names, and ya'll never hear me again"_

_"Fuck. You."_

_McCree heard Gabe groan through the comm, and then muffled Morrison's voice. He was losing patience himself._

_His hands tightened the grip on the bucket. Both of them. Peacekeeper was heavy in his holster._

_Despite he knew this wasn't Deadlock, and he knew any of his commanders would tell them to or even let him do this outside the battlefield, the memories of the gorge haunted his mind._

_He wasn't an executioner. But Deadlock used him as such, not once, nor twice, the youngest boy got the dirtiest work._

_"I said talk!"_

_The prisoner did nothing but pathetically attempting to spit under the cloth. Jesse McCree was a very patient man. But it was the third hour he spent there, so he didn't think much when he threw the empty bucket right into captive's face, the hollow "pom" loud in the claustrophobic room. He heard the prisoner's pained scream, dull Jack's voice saying "that's enough, boy!" and another, more clear, Reyes' one._

_"Leave him be. He'll start talking when he gets hungry."_

_McCree didn't answer. He just spat the butt of his cig on the wet floor, right into the drain under his boots, and left. Being in the corridor he heard the doors open._

_"Kid. You alright?"_

_He tried to ignore that, but Gabe's hand firmly grabbed his arm._

_"'m not really fond of doin' that kind of stuff, boss" He muttered._

_"You'll eventually get used to it." Gabriel patted Jesse's back and let him go._

_And he was right, because merely a year later McCree was able to slam captive's head against the wall multiple times without a flinch of an eye._

_Next thing he noted was an explosion. Explosion right next to his ear, wave of heat hitting his face, and pain in his left arm he couldn't even describe, because it was blacking everything down. He was sure he was dying, but he knew he was dreaming at the same time, because he nearly felt the metal fingers digging into gravel and rock._ He wanted to wake up but he couldn't, his body refusing to work properly anymore, so sleep-deprived it was ready to sacrifice his own sanity for the sake of tiny bit of rest. 

_The pain was deafening. Blood was everywhere. He saw it, he tasted it, he could feel it running down his nose, mouth, dripping on his chest. He was cold, and he barely heard muffled voices, but wasn't able to recognize whom did they belong to or even understand them. He was sure he was deaf. He couldn't feel his left arm, his left side at all, he couldn't breathe but was probably screaming, both from panic and from pain, and there was someone grabbing him and-_

_"This is fucking pointless, jefe!"_

_He found himself on the overwatch shooting range for the first time in quite a long time. Clutching Peacekeeper in his right he was looking angrily on Reyes, standing behind him. "I cannot even_ feel _the hammer, how I am supposed to -"_

_He hit his left palm with the barrel of the gun, loud clank of hitting metal with another metal echoed in the room._

_Gabriel crossed arms over his chest and nodded._

_"Stop whining, kid, and try again."_

_A dry_ _sob escaped him when for a split second he saw nothing but darkness, but when he- at least he thought he did so - opened his eyes he was again in the cave on a rock shelf in New Mexico._

_But he wasn't alone._

_Lying on the ground he saw a pair of slim legs in metal boots. When he looked up, already anxious, he saw a face of no one else than Hanzo Shimada._

_A face of sheer disgust and loathing looking down at him, nose wrinkled, golden scarf moving slightly behind him on the inexistent wind.  He came closer, The cowboy unable to move, but didn't even bother to squat in front of him._

_"You are ridiculous, McCree."_

_"I know" he wanted to say, but wasn't able to. He only looked at Hanzo's face, painfully moving his head._

_"And you are a fool for believing there could ever be something between us, cowboy. Look at yourself" the archer kneeled, seething every word through clenched teeth "crawling in the dirt like a bug, dying like a wounded animal, not even worthy to-"_

He woke up suddenly, alone, cold evening breeze blowing into his face, heart racing.  

The sky was solid red, like a pool of blood.

His vision was blurry, mouth dry, sand and dirt between his teeth. There were shallow furrows in the ground where his metal fingers were. Dazing off, half-conscious he reached to the bag and took the leftover bottle of whisky out, barely managed to open it, and poured some into his mouth just to get rid of this disgusting dryness, doing it mindlessly, not really aware of his actions. The alcohol burned his throat and he nearly choked on it, his stomach twisting in violent protest, so eventually he put the bottle away. He took his zippo instead, set the roots on fire and lighted his cig. Dry, painful cough shook him, but he didn't stop smoking. He put the butt down only when he could no longer hold it. Slowly he rested his head back on the bag.

_Reyes' office was quite dim, large windows covered in half by drawn blinds. It wasn't always like that though, view too nice to miss, and the fact it was like that now didn't mean anything good. Gabriel was sitting by his desk, arms crossed, shoulders tense and a little bit hunched. His face was enigmatic enough McCree couldn't really tell why was he called in, but his boss for sure wasn't happy._

_"Listen, Jesse" Reyes finally spoke, straightening up "you must've noticed everything's going to shit annoyingly rapidly, and Morrison is no longer able to keep the situation intact. It's gonna hit the fan sometime soon, week, two, month if we're lucky enough, because UN digs deeper and deeper, finding more and more corruption cases, frauds even I had no idea about. They will fill more and more lawsuits, and, fair or not, we will have to face them."_

_McCree slowly puts cig he was holding in his mouth and lit it. Despite he was seating quite loosely in the chair, legs spread and his prosthetic dangling behind the backrest, he was dense, not sure where Reyes' monologue is going. Of course they had problems. Of course no one listened to Overwatch's spokeswoman and it was Morrison who stood in the courtroom several times now, and Jesse felt bad for the man for taking all the shit on himself. And of course Reyes' already stepped from the deepest shadows to help him. Even though Blackwatch was suspended for more than a year now, it's existence was officially confirmed barely a few months ago._

_"What d'ya want me to do then, boss? Go to the court, say what I think of 'em and where they can shove all of their crap?"_

_Gabriel looked at him, eyes tired and sad, in a way._

_"I need you to leave."_

_There was a solid minute of mutual silence, Reyes sighing heavily, rubbing his face with his hands. McCree looked stunned, eyes wide, when he very slowly put out his cig in the ashtray, still half-intact._

_"What...?"_

_"You're my best man, McCree, and you know it" Gabriel stood up, crossing his arms in his back, walking up to one of the blinded windows "second in command, with a well-deserved position in this circus, and I trust you with my life."_

_"Boss-"_

_"But the media don't know you. You still have the advantage of anonymity I gave up, and I need you to take advantage of it. I don't- I don't want you to meet the same fate Amari did, though you were dangerously close already." He was still turned back on Jesse, facing the window, stubbornly looking into the grey fabric of the blind. "And I don't want my hat work to go to waste. I kept you out of prison- it would be pointless for you to get there eventually."_

_"Boss, I can't leave like that! Not like- leave you? What with all the others?! What with Genji-"_

_Reyes turned to him._

_"Shimada's nothing but a mere weapon for the media, boy" it made Jesse to bare his teeth for a moment, and Gabe shook his head. "I know he is not, but press and UN doesn't care what any of us think. Genji is only an immoral, underground experiment of making a tool of a dying man. However the media show it he would be the subject of nothing but pity from the public. He will stay away from the crossfire, and will be sent on a mission soon and far enough."_

_"So you're making him 'go on a mission', but have me quit completely? For people to think I ran away?"_

_"He's only a pawn, and you're the officer- and for fuck's sake, act like it- if you stayed, you'd be called to account for the accusations!"_

_McCree didn't answer to that. He was sitting straight now- fully alerted and somehow pale. Reyes finally came back to the desk, but didn't take a seat._

_"I- I don't care about myself, boss, if I could only-"_

_"I know you don't, and that's the problem. But I do, mijo. You're a wanderer, and you wouldn't be able to sit here motionless for next months, suspended."_

_McCree flinched. "I'm not your son" he wanted to snap, but opted not to. Still deeply shaken by this whole situation, he had no reason to believe it was actually happening, so he just let it slide, didn't look up though. He was acting like a moody teen._

_Reyes put an envelope in front of McCree, making Jesse look at him._

_"Train ticket to the airport, a plane ticket to Austin. Driving license, some money. Stay out of trouble, find yourself a job. I made sure your criminal record accidentally burnt down.This is your third chance. Make good use of it."_

_The gunslinger just glared._

_"What if I tell you I don't need your protection, Reyes! I don't need your third chance!" he finally growled, standing up "I'm not gonna run-"_

_"This. Is an order, McCree!" He raised his voice and shoved the envelope into cowboy's hands._

Jesse's eyes snapped open again. The talk, in reality, was sharper, not louder though; the "orders" he had been given were easy to follow, but he failed nonetheless, too much bonded with a constant crime to give up on it so easy. 

He wasted the third chance he was given. Damn ingrate.

On the ground he saw two shadows circling around him. The vultures were coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing and reading are funny in the context of perceiving time because when you read a good fic waiting a few weeks for an update is a goddamn torture, but when you're the writer a few weeks feels like a few days haha
> 
> Actually, I'm not sure anybody at all reads these, but this note's gonna be long because suddenly I have a lot to say sorry  
> First of all, I was planning to post this chapter last week, but since I'm still going through major depression episode and I was just plain sick with a terrible cold I managed to do it only now, for which I'm sorry. On the brighter side, I added the whole dream with Reyes telling Jesse to leave, because the first version of the chapter was lacking it, and being Reyes' excuser as I am I had to take my own twist on this whole "damn Ingrate" thing. I'm all for the father-son relationship between Gabriel and McCree too. And... and I let myself slip some tiny Hamilton reference there. Not that I'm a huge fan of the play itself, but I'm a huge history nerd (and since we all can say Reyes have a thinG FOR THEATRE don't judge me) It won't happen again, I promise. But this part. This part just called for it.
> 
> ANOTHER THING I'M SUPER SORRY FOR is that all the chapters are so super short. I've only noticed it while the fic was almost finished because for one- this whole eight-chapter thing was written in notes app on my phone (that doesn't count words) and two- believe it or not, it took me nearly six months to write it (and it's still not finished but i'm on the last chapter so it's nearing... to an end...). I'm not a writer as I said multiple times, and I take on it when I'm not drawing, usually from 1 do 3 in the morning, also this whole fic is pretty... intense for me, and emotionally draining, too. but I'm doing my best, I promise  
> soon enough I'm gonna acquire a laptop, too, so I'll be more aware how efficient I am with my writing! It's like a super duper cool news, because maybe I'll be more useful finally haha  
> That leads me to my (i lost my count of things) thing, that is- if i'd be about to write again, what would you like to read? I have some plans for something Morrison-centric, from the times before he even joined SEP (but i may turn it into a comic???), something specifically about Blackwatch (since I'm all for good military fiction and. I love. such things.) or Halloween event-based story, but more in Grimm fables-Gothic literature-Over the garden wall-less pg 12 inspired universe (well that's actually happening anyway, but it's a huge ass project I'm doing a ton of thigs for, like re-designing nearly all characters' halloween skins to fit the aesthetic sough)?? Idk tho, I'll make something about everything listed anyway, but. whatever speaks to you all the most.
> 
> AH OK because this hellnote is probs longer than the actual chapter, as always this is my  
> [tumblr](http://vrronska.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/vrronska)
> 
> please talk to me


	6. Chapter 6

When they walked into the store Hanzo felt a blow of cold air from air conditioning so pleasant he almost gasped aloud. The room was almost empty, only Benny, him and a young girl behind the counter. She was on her phone, her hair tied back in a ponytail, looking at them from time to time from behind her glasses. She couldn't be much older than Hana. 

He was taking three water bottles out of the freezer when he felt Benny grabbing his arm. He almost hit him, as he wasn't the type that liked being touched by strangers but just clenched teeth instead. Bounty hunter shoved McCree's photo torn from the wanted poster into his hand.

"Ask her about him, samurai, I need to check on the rest."

Hanzo unrolled the photo. Benny had to tear it from the poster at the back door of the bar because McCree had holes made with darts instead of his eyes. Worn, torn paper made it hard to distinguish the person on it; showing it would be pointless. Describing him would be pretty pointless too - since it was an undercover mission the cowboy might not run around in his dumb red serape. Or maybe he did, it doesn't matter, he had to find a better photo anyway. He took out his phone, the private one, and texted Genji with a heavy sigh.

_"Send me a photo of the cowboy."_

After a split second, he saw the bubble informing him his brother was writing back, and he felt obliged to add:

_"WITHOUT the cat ears filter."_

The bubble suddenly disappeared. Hanzo rolled his eyes.

It wasn't the best idea there was, to send McCree's photos around on the unsecured communication channel, but it wasn't the concern now. He knew how to cover things like that, and was nearly sure Genji knew this as well. 

He took out the comm too, just glimpsing on the screen. There was indeed message from his brother, reading something around "we got you, we're getting back to the shuttle, call if you'd need a backup" that was enough and all he needed to know. His phone buzzed. 

The photo was a bit blurred, bright with the flash and surprisingly new, taken a few weeks ago on so-called "party" Hanzo didn't attend. McCree was sitting in an armchair in the common room, along with Tracer who occupied one of the armrests, cowboy's hat on her head. The gunslinger was sitting sloppily, with a bottle of beer in his real hand, metal one pointing at something. He was grinning to the camera, but Hanzo couldn't not notice how tired his eyes were. Overall, he had to admit that despite the questionable quality, the photo was quite pleasant to the eye. But that was not the case, he scolded himself, took the bottles of water and went to the girl, still looking at his phone. There was a message that came with the photo, and another one sent a bit later.

" _Thank Angela for that, it's hers_ "

and

" _I have only ones with the cat filter •̀.̫•́_ _✧_ "

Well, he figured.

"Hi" the girl greeted him, putting her phone away "how are you?" Hanzo noticed she had a photo of D.Va on her lock screen. She took his water.

"Fine." he was never good with banter, so just went straight to the point, showing her the photo and simultaneously paying for his water "have you, by any chance, have seen this man here yesterday?"

The girl fixed her glasses looking at the screen, hummed and gave Hanzo the change.

"Uh, maybe, there was a guy like that... Kinda weird, if you ask me, he acted a little bit odd, but he had a hat like that and didn't have his left arm, so..."

"What do you mean he acted odd?"

"Well he was quite nervous, I guess. At first, I thought he's just drunk, or on some kind of drugs, but he seemed... Rather desperate when he came closer. I don't know, he was pale, his hands were shaking and he bought  two bottles of whisky and headed straight into the desert, and that is just suicidal, really."

Hanzo felt his stomach dropping.

"Have you seen where he went? In which direction..."

"Yeah, I've been watching for a while" she shrugged and pointed through the window "there, straight to the mountains"

"Thank you."

He packed his water and went to the door.

"Hey" the girl said, just when he was leaving "you seem concerned. Hope you'll find him alright." 

He just nodded and stepped into the sun, immediately losing his breath. He nearly forgot how awful the weather was. 

"You were right, he ran into the mountains" he said to Benny, who stood nearby "but he couldn't get far"

"Motherfucker" bounty hunter spat on the cracked concrete, nodding his people to follow "of course he did"

They crossed the road and got into the desert. 

"Boss" one of the hunters, the only omnic there, came up to  them, pointing something far away ahead of them "I was there with Johnny a few years ago... There's a cave, one of them, where he was hiding for some time"

"How could you know it was him?"

"There was a date scribbled on the wall, and a lot of lines, a calendar of some sort, or just a number of people he killed" he stopped "but everything there fits. It's his cave, I'm sure"

Benny crossed his arms.

"Even if it is... It's unlikely he'd go there, he's not an idiot."

Hanzo frowned. There was something very bad happening with McCree, he could be drunk or drugged, or both, or neither; he was not thinking clearly anyway. And where would a lonely, nervous person go, being in the desert, with the mind fogged by God knows what?

To a place that he knew. That would bring him at least a tiny bit of comfort.

Hanzo of all people knew it the best.

"It is worth checking, still."

 

They walked for a good amount of time, Hanzo drying two bottles of water and nearly getting a heatstroke. When they passed the canyon and got closer to the mountains they settled up for the cold night in the rocks. Hanzo sat a bit further from the group, with Stormbow at his side, absolutely not planning to sleep. He saw Benny looking at him. 

"Hey, Samurai! Taking the night watch?"

"Boss!"

Hanzo didn't even get to answer, when another bounty hunter came running uphill, stumbling over his buddies in sleeping bags, grasping at something in his hand. A bottle.

"I went over there, to pee, and I found this" he waved it in front of Benny's face "there's still whisky left inside, it's a new one"

Hanzo flickered.  _He bought two bottles of whisky._

Benny took a closer look at the bottle. 

"There are some scratches on the glass... Most likely from his metal hand, too big and deep for the effect of sand or gravel" he spat at the ground "we're on a good path. Look for the cig butts, too; apparently, he doesn't care what he leaves behind"

"But, boss" bounty hunter seemed anxious, rubbing his beard "Isn't he trying to... Lure us? To kill?"

"He isn't the type to lure hunters like a prey" he answered "rather play hide and seek; this is too obvious though. He's in a hurry, maybe afraid, maybe-if we're lucky- hurt. We'll follow the trail, the worst thing that can happen is that we won't find him."

Hanzo looked at the desert. The skies were clear, nearly bright from the number of stars visible. That was an exquisite view, he had to admit that, even though it reminded him that both the night and morning will be very cold. He shifted a bit under his sleeping bag, thinking, frowning as he started to connect the little pieces of information he heard and already had about McCree, regretting not talking to him more personally. If he wanted to know things about Cowboy's life, and asked for sincere answers, he was almost sure he would get them. But he didn't. He wanted to believe didn't care, but the truth is Jesse was for him like a bonfire in the middle of the harsh winter, and deep down all he wanted to do was clung to him and listen to him talk continuously with this deep hushed drawl he seems to get only around Hanzo. Only when they were close enough for him to hear.

 _And you may never hear it again_ , said the voice at the back of his head, the same one that reminded him daily of how he murdered his brother. He shook it off, still thinking about McCree. About the words of others. About the emptied bottle of whisky. Suddenly a cold wave of anxiety washed him, making him stiff for a moment. Nobody would be able to drink a full bottle of such strong alcohol in one day. Even if...

Hanzo jumped a little, hearing silent ping of the comm in his bag. He dug it out and curled around it, not wanting the bounty hunters to see what was he doing. Genji wrote to him.

" _We wanted to fly the shuttle around your location to look for McCree with thermographic camera or something, but Tracer says the sky is too clear for that and we would be too easy to spo_ t"

Hanzo briefly looked up again.

" _She is right_."

Genji answered immediately. It has always been like that- he either texted back in a split second or never.

" _Are you ok, Hanzo?_ "

He was not okay. He knew Genji meant hanging out with nearly two dozens of bounty hunters, not his inner turmoil, but it didn't matter. He suddenly felt an urge to ask his brother all the questions about McCree he had in mind for a long time. Not facing him personally made it way easier, but eventually he decided only on the freshest one.

" _Does the cowboy drink?_ "

For this one Genji needed more time. When he answered it was greatly disappointing.

" _What?_ "

Hanzo rolled his eyes. He suddenly felt ashamed of his question that might be taken for being way too inquisitive.

 _"Is McCree-_ " he stopped typing, looking blindly at the screen. What if he was wrong? It would be beyond awkward if other people knew what he thinks of the gunslinger. If he was right, however, he wouldn't know what to do. He couldn't help him, not because he didn't want to, but because he wasn't even able to help himself.

" _Is McCree fond of liquor-_ " Hanzo paused again, scolding himself. A grown-ass, nearly middle-aged man who couldn't  even form a short question in his native language. Of course McCree is fond of it, his clothes smell of whisky even when they are washed " _\- more than he should have been?_ "

He sent it anyway, not really caring whether it will make him seem illiterate or not. After all, it was only for his brother.

The question itself wasn't the worst, but the whole assumption that the cowboy might have a problem like that definitely was. Thought of it make him uncomfortable. During his five months with overwatch not once he saw McCree intoxicated, let alone dead drunk, but it might be because he was avoiding the parties. And McCree had time in his room as well, sometimes disappearing for a day or two. Hanzo didn't care about this before, seem to not notice it at all, but now it hit him with another wave of anxiety. The comm pinged. He looked at it.

" _Well he likes alcohol, he always did, but why does this even matter right now?_ "

Genji was obviously avoiding the answer. It could mean only one thing, but for now there was no point in digging it. He will not talk if he didn't want to. 

Hanzo's breath got heavier with every bad thought in his mind. What is he going to do if he finds McCree's body? A carcass, as the bounty hunters referred to him - with birds and coyotes feasting on it, flies buzzing around, or lying in a pool of blood, every part of his corpse cut and injured, still whining silently, like Genji once was-

He swallowed hard, suddenly feeling sick. He shifted nervously, pinching the bridge of his nose and shutting his eyes. He had to collect himself. McCree had to be alive, had to, because Hanzo had a lot to say to him, and the cowboy had to hear it.

He wanted to talk to Genji, but he wasn't sure how. In his situation, an eye-to-eye talk would be probably the best and safest idea, but he wasn't ready for it. Not yet. 

Ping of the comm again. 

" _If you find him, talk to him. You'll regret if you didn't_ "

Good timing, Genji, Hanzo thought, and slipped the comm back into the bag, turning to look at the bounty hunters below. Benny was looking at the mountains, squinting, the empty bottle still in his hands. 

They weren't stupid. At first Hanzo thought they are the archetypical bad guys- fully armed, vulgar, angry dumb men, who could barely speak in full sentences- but they were all fairly intelligent. That was dangerous. Benny was the smartest one, of course, but he was only the leader of twenty-one another thinking people. What does this situation make of McCree- who was outplaying them for almost ten years? Not only them- the massive reward for his head had to lure at least hundreds of others. And somehow the cowboy was still alive. It was either sheer luck- or he was way, way more clever than he acted to be.

Hanzo curled into his sleeping bag. It was terribly cold, way colder than he could expect after the midday heat, and he was sitting in the fair distance from the fire. He felt filthy, dirty and sweaty, without any opportunity to wash. The surroundings, however, he found breathtakingly beautiful, and if not for the fact that he was under overwhelming stress, it would be enough to make up for all the inconveniences. He had never seen that amount of stars all at once. 

Almost all the hunters already went to sleep. A few stayed up, but they were nearly completely silent.

He found himself low key wanting the Gunslinger to sit beside him, telling the stories of this unholy land. The archer was completely sure McCree knows at least a few. And even though Hanzo might find his babbling annoying in the base from time to time, here, in nearly complete silence, his voice would blend perfectly into the sound of the wind and occasional crickets. Whereas still a bit off in the weird city of Santa Fe, it was here, in the rough wilderness of nothing but dry gravel and cracked ground where Jesse McCree truly belonged. 

Coyotes howled in the distance. The fire kept them away.

 

Morning came annoyingly fast, bringing insipid, warm wind, pale sky and slight anxiety Hanzo felt every time after a sleepless night. The camp was waking up, bounty hunters collecting their things and preparing for the further journey. He did the same, carefully rolling his sleeping bag and grimly chewing crackers he had for breakfast. Benny went up to him and stood there for a moment.

"Do you see this, samurai?" He asked, squinting.

Hanzo stood up and looked in the same direction. He did.

A thin, weak smudge of smoke, coming from the mountains, and a few birds circling around it, anticipating.

"If we are lucky, we just found sixty million dollars" Benny said, spitting under his boots "and if we are even luckier, I was right and our carcass is injured" he waved a hand at the birds "the vultures are waiting for their prey to die like this. Animals do not start fires, and there are little to no hikers in the area, so..."

Hanzo clenched his fists, feeling the heavy pounding of his heart. 

"What are the other options? I have to be sure-"

"Hikers" Benny shrugged, cutting Hanzo off "lost ones. Stupid missing kids. Stupid kids that ain't missing. More bounty hunters. Any of those are nothing we should care about, but definitely check it out."

Hanzo nodded. Benny carried on.

"Whate- whoever this is, is not in the best condition. Vultures are carrion birds, they ain't attacking shit that's well enough to hurt them."

"Or the cowboy killed the ones that came to him earlier" said Hanzo grimly "and he will leave before we get there."

 

The crickets were loud and annoying, when Hanzo and the bounty hunters left for the mountains, where they saw the smoke. In about half an hour the smoke was no more, the vultures, however, were still circling in the air. 

The other vultures stayed on the ground, and were somewhere around half the way, when loud gunshot interrupted birds' flight, echoing between the rocks and making bounty hunters stop half-step. Benny frowned and spat, looking around. Hanzo felt nauseous.

Echo made it hard to acknowledge from where exactly the shot was fired, but they were in the desert, and there should be nobody around...

"Well, we know now these ain't the hikers"  Benny sniffed "so either he just made job easier for us, or someone got to him first, but then there would be a gunfight..."

Hanzo swallowed thickly. Just the sole thought that the cowboy might have shot himself there, right for his ears to hear was too much to handle. 

Jesse McCree, of all people, wasn't the type that would just do such a thing. Dumb cowboy was probably drunk and shooting to empty bottles. He really wanted to believe this, at least.

There was a time Hanzo wanted to end with himself, too. Thought about it, at least. Never tried though, considering it the greatest cowardice and the easiest way to deal with what he had done. He didn't deserve that.

Benny's voice took him out of the grim thoughts.

"Hey, jap-"

"Call me that one more time, and you will collect your eyeballs from the ground."

"-archer, we're close. You may want to take a look."

They were standing on a hill, rocks spreading out in front of them. In one of the walls there was a shelf and a cave, vultures flying above. It was close enough to see there was something, partially in the cave, half of it sticking out, but too far to distinguish specifically what was that- but on the rim of the rock shelf a few of the birds were fighting over the dead body of their comrade.

Hanzo grabbed the bow and reached for the arrow. In the split second Benny rested his hand on the gun, rest of the bounty hunters following suit, but Hanzo just lightly shook his head. 

The arrow ticked silently, it's head turning blunt and round, small red light blinking on it. He carefully aimed it at the entrance to the cave, and shot.

His heart stopped for a moment when red, pulsing light revealed bulky, limp silhouette of the cowboy, lying face down on the ground. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!   
> This chapter is dedicated to Grammarly, who is my only beta/editor, and i really just went through this chapter just clicking what Grammarly told me do change. No proofreading, we die like men  
> I'm sorry for taking so long again, without getting into deep shit again- my mental health not only did not improve, it actually worsened, but don't worry, I'm on the best way to finish this fanfic! 
> 
> I want to thank every single person that commented this so far, I love you all and I'm reading your comments and they're giving me a will to live, and i want to say big thank you to everyone giving this piece of sh- work kudos, also! Thank you!  
> I swear, one day... one day I'll answer all your comments personally....
> 
> Also important disclaimer: There won't be any even slight sexual content in this fic, for one because I highly doubt it wolud fit to this whole thick angst, and I'm not really comfortable with writing smut as well. I'm sorry if you were waiting for something like this, uughhh
> 
> as always, this is my  
> [tumblr](http://vrronska.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/vrronska)
> 
> please talk to me I'm sad and lonely


	7. Chapter 7

In the corner of his eye, Jesse saw a couple of blurry silhouettes at the top of the nearby hill. 

He counted his bullets. There were six loaded into Peacekeeper, one wasted on exceptionally bold (or very hungry) vulture, which tried to make him die faster, pecking on the back of his neck. That makes five in the gun. 

He had two sets for the cylinder prepared, six per one, twelve in two, seventeen in total. That should be enough. He was again dozing off, disturbed by buzzing flies. He was barely conscious and too weak to wave them off.

Sleep was still clinging to him, dreams mixing with reality on every possible level, not letting him distinguish between one and the other. 

_"You've gotta light?"_

_Four disturbingly big guys in leather jackets came up to him when he was leaning on the bar's wall with the cig in his mouth. They were keeping a close eye on each other for a while now; they rode up there in a larger group, on motorcycles that spoke in many ways to Jesse's fourteen year old heart. When the group came into a bar, everyone inside went silent. They knew who they were, McCree knew as well, stories about them told over and over in the local news and among the people; sometimes he could see them sitting in the bar or riding around the city, obnoxiously loud. The Deadlock Rebels Motorcycle Club, originating from New Mexico and founded back in 1976, was probably the most dangerous outlaw organization in the south, or at least the most active. Wasn’t the biggest though; still outgunned by Hell’s Angels DRMC had only 25 chapters in 6 countries, but worked insanely good trafficking weapons and very occasionally drugs. McCree couldn’t lie, he was hanging around them for quite a while, that’s what made him come to this bar in the first place, and buy himself a beer to appear older than he was. They were standing before him now- well, some of them- with cigarettes in their hands. Jesse smirked and nodded_.   
_“We know you were the one who’s killed old Frank in the hunting shop.” One of them growled, putting the cig in his mouth and making Jesse swallow hard “But that’s alright, he owed us money anyway.”  
Jesse wasn’t a prospect for long, luckily, because being unable to fully pay his contribution even with stolen money he was being hazed quite harshly, it ended very promptly though, when the president noticed how swift he is with the revolver and how loyal he could be if he only wanted. And so, after one and a half year of doing the dirtiest and the most unpleasant work in the club and surprising determination, as the youngest full member of the club ever patched, he was given his full colors along with the patch portraying skull with crossed bones and a function of an enforcer. Or sergeant-at-arms, what sounded impressive, but he served mostly as a group’s hitman, with his real Deadeye and old, rusty gun. The title didn’t bring him any benefits, either- he was still entitled to only_ _one glass of water per day, still slept on some rags on the floor and still got just enough food, mostly corn, to not die. It was always like that and for most, he was a prospect until Blackwatch got to them and torn to bits._

The silhouettes were no more when he opened his eyes. Peacekeeper's hammer clicked. Seventeen bullets.

Tears were blurring his vision, making the only sense he could trust unreliable, his heart skipping a beat every time he thought he saw any movement. 

_He got his first gun in hand at the age of seven, from the neighbour he was helping on a farm. Old, simple Smith & Wesson, not really easy for a kid to handle, but there was nothing else to use instead._

_"It's only to scare coyotes away from the calfs" he said, while showing Jesse how things work "just aim in their general direction, best for an empty spot, or just up in the air- you don't have to shot them, try to avoid the cows. Do not play with it, kid, this is not a toy by any means."_

_And so he did what the neighbour said, looking for the cows and feeling like a real man with the gun by his belt, heavy and long like his whole thigh._

_The coyotes were very vicious this year. The drought had started about a year ago and continued, and little did Jesse knew it won't end anytime soon, being a terrible ecological disaster. But Jesse didn’t know that. He didn’t knew better than what he had, the desert, the ranch house and his mother- and didn’t really long for anything else. He never knew his father, and the neighbor he was helping wasn’t any substitute for him at all; helping him was beneficial for both sides, because he had a lot of cattle, and Jesse’s mother had a lot of land which she wanted to sell, but nobody wanted to buy. So they were herding the cattle, moving it from one dry pasture to the other, thirty one of their cows and over a hundred neighbor’s ones. McCree got his hat one Christmas, a few sizes too big but he was wearing it with pride nonetheless- and rode an old, chestnut mare named Dolly, and despite he barely reached the stirrups of his saddle with his feet he could easily rope a calf by himself. And now he had a gun, and he was the Real Man._  
The drought, however, was brutal. The government promised, but never did send anything to help the region, besides supplying big cities in water, and even though they lived on the far outskirts of Santa Fe there was nothing they got. It was bad to the point that even the stream that was always somehow wet, enough for the cattle to drink and Jesse to swim, turned into nothing but thick mud.  
Because of that, the coyotes were hungry, and the cattle were weak.

 _A few days later he was able to use the revolver like the true cowboys from his movies would, shooting not to steady cans set on a log but living, moving things, baring their teeth at him. He tried to save the calf, cut off from the herd by the pack of starved, dirty coyotes._ _The shot in the air did nothing but spooking poor old Dolly, which bucked him off and ran away to the herd of cows, living him on the ground._

_The first thing that he saw when he managed to stand up was the coyote's eyes looking right into his own. The calf slipped away and escaped, leaving him alone, absolutely without any chance._

_Five bullets he had left and used all of them, missing only one. He felt those shots in his arms days after._

_His neighbour was deeply shocked when he arrived to see what happened, of course he was. Jesse curled on the dusty ground, crying his eyes off, gripping to the revolver with both hands. Four coyotes, three dead and one still whining, were lying around him._

_Three years after, he saw the omnics in person for the first time. It was the very same day when he last saw his mother. They came from the city and McCree could clearly recall how shiny their purple and silver metal shells were in the harsh bright sun, how his scared mare nearly bucked him off, how he wanted to shoot them with his S &W and how he eventually ran back home, only to find it burned to the ground. That was the first time he ran away. His neighbor was nice enough to inform the police about a missing kid, not nice enough to take him in, however, and he was caught by the authorities when he ran into the city and put in the orphanage that seemed to be like a cage without any doors back then.  So he was avoiding this place as he could, hanging out in the worst parts of the city, skipping classes and eventually completely dropping school. He started smoking at twelve, drinking at fourteen, and eventually let himself got caught by shiny black bikes of the Deadlock gang._

The voices were getting closer. Jesse flinched when he heard them and calculated his chances- a pathetically easy target he was, lying motionless on the ground with hands trembling, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Just like vultures, they came to peck on his neck.

He shifted a little, making more place for his right hand to move, and squinted the swollen eyes. Hunters’ heads were already picking from under the rim of the shelf. He needed a drink.

Two of them died even before they could pull back the hammers of their guns. McCree nearly entirely missed the first one, shooting him in the knee, and turned to the other while he fell on the rock; second shot hit the man in the throat and he faceplanted into the extinguished fireplace, giving Jesse a split second to finish the one curled on the ground. Another came onto the shelf, already shooting; only the little bit of luck McCree had left let him cover his face with a metal arm, deflecting the bullet with a loud "clank" and a wave of pain. Just in the second he took down the shooter, he saw another one coming on him.

The last bullet in the gun.

He aimed and pulled the trigger, Peacekeeper only clicked and the cylinder rotated, but nothing more happened. His heart nearly stopped. He will die at this very moment.

He didn't die, though, but the bounty hunter did, falling on the ground with something sticking out of his back.

An arrow.

This was not real. This had to be one of his dreams. With trembling hands he tried to reload, shaking the corrupted bullet out of the cylinder, breathing so nervously he nearly suffocated. Someone came to the cave again, and Jesse raised his head, to look into the face of his killer, clutching the gun.

But it wasn't a bounty hunter blocking the sun. It was Hanzo.

And he wasn't disgusted, he wasn't even angry; he was deeply terrified, his face turning almost completely white on the sight of McCree.

 

 

Hanzo went rogue the moment he saw that one of the bounty hunters is not falling on the ground immediately after entering the cave. His first instinct was to send a scatter arrow inside- nearly a certain shot, given that he couldn't see the target well enough, but he didn't want to hurt McCree. He aimed and released the string nearly blindly, threw himself forward and climbed on the rock shelf, feeling somehow relieved seeing his arrow sticking from one of the hunters' back. But then he saw the cowboy, lying on the ground, very dirty, a bit bloody and in obviously serious condition, and he felt all the blood draining from his face. The gunslinger was looking at him- not with sharp and knowing eagle eyes. His eyes were hazy and swollen- this one time he wasn't the predator. He was the prey. But somewhere behind the haze covering his eyes there was a will to fight, as it always was.

It lasted no more than a second, and Hanzo turned to the opening of the cave hearing Peacekeeper's cylinder clicking in place. 

He shot his arrows one after the other, trying to dodge bounty hunters' bullets at the same time hearing Jesse shoot and shifting nervously, not really able to even sit upwards. He desperately wanted to help him, but he couldn't, barely keeping up with the number of people that were coming up to get him. Get them both.

Jesse took down all those who managed to slip Hanzo's arrows. Six dead bodies hit the ground in the cave, eight laying at the gravel by the feet of the hill. But there were still four hunters left. One of them being Benny, still standing below him.

"What a fucking idiot I was to trust you, jap!" 

"You were."

Hanzo finally let himself get blinded by his anger. He shot.

And it was a furious shot, poorly aimed, and Benny had an incredible amount of luck, and the thing he held was just at the right angle, and...

The empty whisky bottle.

The bounty hunter managed to deflect Hanzo's arrow with a whisky bottle, and it hit cave's ceiling and landed just behind McCree who was reloading his gun. 

Hanzo and Benny looked at each other, both plainly shocked, but it was a moment of distraction that cost Hanzo way too much. One of the hunters getting on the shelf grabbed his ankle and pulled him down. 

And Hanzo fell, barely managing to stay on the shelf and violently hitting the hunter in the head, but all five arrows he had left spilt from his quiver and, clattering, fell down. 

"Hanzo!"

The cowboy's voice was surprisingly weak and rasped to the point he barely understood his own name, but he stood up and jumped to him, because they were still coming and they were coming up to get them, and he had no arrows and nothing he was doing from now on was calculated, and if Jesse McCree was going down, he was ready to go down with him in this very moment.

What happened next took only a few seconds, no more.

Hanzo jumped to the gunslinger and hunched over him to grab the deflected arrow, but he didn't even manage to do so, because he heard a shot and in the same moment Jesse rose from the ground impossibly fast, his form covering Hanzo nearly completely and there was a "draw" rasped loudly and McCree's right eye, that Hanzo could barely see, reflected nonexistent red light, and there were four more shots, and all the bounty hunters dropped dead, bullets right in the middle of their foreheads.

Hanzo had never seen someone shooting at that pace and with that aim.

But he had no time to think on that, because McCree coughed sharply, released Peacekeeper from his hand, clutched his chest instead and fell too, leaning back, Hanzo catching him under his armpits and kneeling from the impact. The cowboy wheezed, surprised, coughed once again and looked around, holding his breath, swallowing fast realising something, and then his hand slipped from his chest to the ground.

"Mc-" the gunslinger was bleeding, his shirt under the serape getting darker and darker a few inches down his heart. "Jesse."

Hanzo panicked. McCree coughed again; coughed out blood and gagged, trying to catch air, opening his mouth like a fish taken out of the water.

"Jesse, hold on" 

Hanzo's hands were shaking when he untied the scarf from his hair and balled it, pressing it firmly to the wound. McCree moved and groaned from the pain, and coughed again, the archer holding his scarf with one hand, furiously trying to find the comm in his bag with the other. He found it, almost immediately switching it to emergency mode he called to Genji.

"Hanzo, are you all-"

"I need a doctor here, you have the coordinates"

There was a movement on the other side of the line and Angela was the next person to speak.

"What's going on?"

"McCree-" he looked down on his slowly soaking scarf, trying to speak over gunslinger's choking, words spilling from his mouth "McCree got shot in the chest, he's suffocating, doctor Ziegler-" Hanzo took a shaky breath "Mercy, please, please, I..."

He never begs. But at this moment he didn't really register what he was doing and what was going on around him, he heard Angela answering, but the only thing he was aware of was the cowboy, with his Head on Hanzo's shoulder, going paler and paler with every passing second, blood and red foam coming out of his mouth, hazy, frightened eyes looking rather nowhere.

Hanzo was watching Jesse McCree drowning in his own blood. He was letting him drown in his own blood. But he couldn't do anything about it.

The gunslinger wheezed again and moved weakly and anxiously, making the archer to grab him more firmly and look at his face.

"H-hat " McCree blurted out with stertorous voice, the creepiest one Hanzo ever heard; it was whispered under cowboy's breath, barely audible, not enough air getting to his throat to produce sound "my ha-hat-" 

"Quiet" Hanzo snapped, way more aggressively than he intended to "don't talk." 

He did grab the filthy hat from the ground, however, and shoved it into McCree's cold hand. The cowboy did something that could be a weak attempt to smile and tried to speak again.

"Shush" Hanzo looked around, hoping that the engine sound he heard in the distance was actually there "shush, Jess."

He was mumbling something more, blinded by his helplessness, and he might be crying just as well, he wasn't sure; he has always been a collected man, but it all went to hell, because it was just like the night Genji stood in front of him with the bared sword.

Blood on his hands. Blood on the ground, on his clothes, everywhere, silent whimpering and his whole reality transforming into nothing but white noise, and it was happening all over again.

McCree's breaths became less frantic, he became less tense; his head lolled to the side, forehead resting on Hanzo's neck, and he budged, lights on his mechanical arm flicking and going completely off. He limped, his eyes turning, only whites visible under not completely shut eyelids.

Hanzo was nearly completely sure he lost his mind. White noise. White noise getting louder and louder in his ears, there was nothing around him but terrifying void and the dead body of Jesse McCree. 

 

 

It was pure instinct. He rose from the ground because he saw how well the gun was aimed, and he took the shot because that's what he does, he takes other people shots and gets away with it. Lucky cowboy whose luck ran out. Then there was an overwhelming pain, then he shot all the hunters one by one and then he realized he took his chest plate off. 

He couldn't breathe, a taste of copper in his mouth with blood filling his lungs, darkness surrounded him and the last thing he knew was that he was falling back.

_But he never hit the ground._

_There was a soft rumble in the black emptiness, and something wrapped around him softly._

_"Oh, dumb, poor cowboy"_

_The dragons were beautiful. With blue, iridescent scales, silky in touch like a skin of a snake; their manes were gold, pure gold, not just orange or yellow, their antlers like a polished Ivory. Two pairs of amber eyes looked at him with woe._

_He never saw them like that._

_Hell, he saw them once, two blue ghosts, big as trains, destroying everything on their way, leaving behind nothing but destruction and dead bodies. Those dragons here were nothing like it, they were smaller, their heads not bigger than pony’s resting on Jesse's chest and stomach, they were physical, actual animals McCree could touch, that were wrapped around him in surprisingly protective manner. They weren't cold, but they weren't warm either; they smelled like the cold air after a big storm._

_"Aren't you afraid, cowboy?"_

_And they were talking, with voices McCree couldn't really describe; the one with the head on his chest had deeper, harsher voice- sounds of Hanzo's one in it. The second one, that was licking the wound, reminded him more of younger Genji._

_"I... I'm not."_

_"Good."_

_"Am I dead?"_

_There was another rumble, that sounded more like a loud purr, and the dragons shifted a little, the first one sliding one of his three-fingered paw into gunslinger's hand._

_"No, Jesse McCree, you are not. Not yet. Not at this moment."_

_"Pity." He didn't think that through, it just came out of his mouth._

_The dragon that was licking his wound growled and moved, grabbing one of his thighs in its teeth. It was a light bite, much like dogs catch things in their jaws just to let their owners know they don't like something, definitely nothing to hurt him. The dragon withdrew quickly anyway._

_"Dumb cowboy, maybe there is a purpose for it."_

_"Yeah. Maybe. Maybe not."_

_He never was the one to complain a lot, especially facing two very ancient creatures that had him in their grip. But he sure had a lot to say on that matter, and he held it to himself. Like he always did. He moved, wanting to fix the hat on his head, but before he was able to do that he realised he was holding it in his hand. Weird._

_"Yours is the desert, gunslinger. Make use of it. You don’t have to travel alone, wanderer, not anymore."_

_Of course they were enigmatic. He wanted to understand what they meant, but decided against it. Not now._

_Being in the embrace of two dragons were somehow relaxing but he still was in pain. A terrible one, no doubt, to the point he wasn't sure what hurt the most, but dulled, like he didn't feel it fully. And he was tired. Enough to finally let himself fall asleep, hat in his hand, accompanied by soft, silent purr of the dragons and darkness around him._

 

"Jesse, no."

The noise was getting louder and louder, making Hanzo clench his teeth and shut his eyes. 

He was weirdly curled around the cowboy, muttering in Japanese, trying to catch any sign of life from him, anything that would give him a little bit of hope. There wasn't any.

"Jesse."

He was ready to fight anyone who would come for them, because he wasn't going to leave him. Not like he left Genji.

Not that he would ever admit that, but McCree was the closest person he ever had who wasn't his brother. Probably the only one he had at all, and now he had his blood on his hands. 

"Jesse..."

He will never fucking learn.

He will never learn to appreciate the people he cares about until they lay dead in his arms. Genji was right, he should've talked with the cowboy when he had a chance. But would it really change anything? McCree deserved better than him anyway.

There were muffled cries Hanzo could hear despite the deafening noise in his head, and so he unconsciously grabbed Peacekeeper from the ground, blindly aiming it in the general direction of the shelf rim. The gun laid weirdly in his hand, it was uncomfortable to hold, over time shaped by McCree's hand, fitted perfectly to fingers of his owner.

He never shot, however, because Jesse jerked in his arms gasping for air again, Hanzo noticed a golden beam and the gun fell on the rock, and he grabbed the cowboy firmer, and it turned out the noise he heard wasn't fully made up by him, but it was the hum of the shuttle engines as well, and...

"-im up!"

Someone grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled back, away from the gunslinger, and he tried to fight but wasn't really able to, completely numb and detached from everything around him. 

It was only when his palms touched the dirt on the solid rock when he slowly started realising what is actually going on. There was a shuttle. Genji and Mercy were bringing McCree in. They were talking, but it was hard for Hanzo to even distinguish English words. He didn't care anyway, shaking, his heart pounding and it took a few minutes before Genji jumped out of the shuttle and got to him. He barely managed to not freak out, remembering that his brother is alive, and that it wasn't his blood Hanzo had on his hands.

"Hanzo" he grabbed archer's shoulders making him look up "are you all right?"

At least he was speaking in Japanese. That was something Hanzo could handle.

"Yes."

He blurted out, not looking at his brother. Genji hasn't had his mask on. 

"Come on, get up. We're heading back."

Hanzo was pulled up from his knees, and he needed a second to collect himself enough to even stand straight. He took McCree's hat - that had to fell out of his hand - and Peacekeeper from the ground, he grabbed also his bag and angrily kicked the half empty bottle of whisky. It clanged loudly and broke.

Genji took cowboy's chest plate, Hanzo's bag and Stormbow and looked at him concerned, leading him back to the shuttle.

 

And just like that, everything was over.

Hanzo stood by the window, dumping everything except the hat by the wall, and he just looked blindly at the hills getting smaller and smaller, all the dead bodies left behind which were a feast the vultures circling around the spot could only dream of, ruthless desert disappearing behind the clouds.

And he was standing there, as numb as before, with hair in his eyes and crumpling cowboy's hat in bloody hands. 

"He'll live."

Twenty minutes it took Genji to show up by Hanzo's side. He was running from Mercy's medbay to the comm, talking with Winston. If Hanzo wasn't so detached from the reality he would be impressed how invested his brother was in all this, but now he didn't really care. He wasn't even sure if he wanted him around.

"Mercy told you that?"

"No" he admitted, a bit crestfallen "she barely had time to look at me. But McCree had it worse, and whatever Angela says, she is a miracle worker."

"He was dead!" Hanzo barked hoarsely, finally making himself look at Genji. He noticed he was shaking under sympathetic eyes of the Sparrow.

"So was I."

There was a long, awkward silence, Hanzo getting paler than he was, if it was even possible.

And then Genji made a step.

And leaned forward.

And before he could protest, do something, for the first time in twenty years Hanzo found himself in his brother's  hug. A little bit uncertain at first, it grew tighter as the seconds passed.

And it was a few long minutes before Genji let go and sighed.

"Do you need a hair tie?"

"What?"

"Your hair is loose. Do you want to tie it back? Not that I have any, but I can look for-"

Hanzo just glared at his brother.

“No.”

 

They landed smoothly in Gibraltar, immediately surrounded by the crowd of people, so loud and insufferable Hanzo had to take his belongings and leave without a word, guided by Genji's alarmed sight. He ignored it, however, just like he ignored everyone else; navigating through the base nearly on autopilot he found his quarters. The tension eased only when the door to his room shut behind him.

The flight back took way less time than the one to New Mexico, but maybe it was just him or maybe the urgency was just way different; now he was absolutely, utterly lost. He had no idea what to do with himself, what to do with his things, so he just threw his bag and empty quiver on the floor, carefully lying Stormbow next to them. He needed a shower, since he still felt cowboy's blood on his hands, despite washing them thoroughly about three times on a ship; he was dirty and dusty anyway, too. He took off his boots and went straight to the bathroom and when he was done there, he sat on the bed, curling knees under his chin.

Never before was he so aware of the coldness of his room, of the bare white walls and almost no signs it was him who was living there. 

The stress he felt was overwhelming, hands constantly shaking, heart skipping a beat every time his phone vibrated with a text or call from Genji. He never picked it up from the bedside table, just like he never answered his brother's knocking at the door. He was too afraid to do so. He didn't want to know what was going on with the cowboy, because every single message could be the bad one, and he wasn't ready to take it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huh it took some time didn't it
> 
> I'm so sorry I made y'all wait for so long, and i'm sorry you'd have to wait some time for the last one as well, since it's still unfinished and i don't know when I'll find some time to close it off, since it's finals time for me. BUT!  
> Will Jesse die? Will Jesse live? Tags are ruining the suspension but, well. This chapter was a bit gory and I'm sorry for thAT TOO I'M SORRY FOR LIKE. everything. that is happening here nkaekjkjdasjbksaDBJASD I am a hot mess
> 
> I doubt anyone is SO INVOLVED in this story that HAS TO KNOW whats going on and needs to be updated on it asap, but  
> this is my  
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> please talk to me, I'm super active on those social media (and post fanart at least once a week on both)


	8. Chapter 8

He went out the next morning, after almost entirely sleepless night, wandering to the kitchen to make some tea and possibly eat something. Cautious at first he relaxed a little when Mei greeted him happily. That meant nothing very bad happened lately, so, after a cup of tea and a bowl of rice, he wandered around the base for a while. And then his legs betrayed him and took him to the medbay.  
He didn't really want to visit McCree properly, like he should have, so he just sneaked into the room, overly aware of the tapping of his boots, and peeked through the glass.  
McCree was asleep, still looking awful. Not that bad like he did on the desert, obviously, but still horribly pale, with dark circles around his eyes, breathing heavily under the sheets. It was hard for Hanzo to decide what was more terrifying: The cowboy literally dying in his arms or the sight of him lying just like that, with cables and tubes connected to him, the only indicator that he's more alive than he was in New Mexico being the screen next to the bed he laid in. No matter how helpless and scared he was yesterday, this was more uncomfortable to watch. He was no less helpless, too. McCree wasn't moving at all, not even flinching like a man do in his sleep, one of the tubes coming straight out of his mouth. And he didn't have his left arm.  
Hanzo knew Jesse was lacking a forearm, obviously, the artificial one more than obnoxious; but never before he saw the gunslinger without his prosthetic. He looked very... Vulnerable like that. It was weird, but mostly because it was unusual, and Hanzo suddenly felt strangely protective. Enough to make him angry, because of course anger was the only emotion he wasn't afraid to show and knew how to deal with, so he turned away from the window and froze like a deer in the headlights.  
From behind the open doors at the end of the corridor, there was Mercy looking at him. She was sitting behind the desk, looking dead tired, and she smiled weakly, what shocked him enough to not be able to return the smile. He wasn't sure he would do that anyway. Trying to awkwardly back off, he heard the sound of doors opening and before he could react there was unnecessarily loud "brother!" and when he turned his head so fast his neck cracked he stood face to face with Genji, whose eyes smiled on his sight. He was holding McCree's things in his arms, his bag, hat and serape.   
"I'm glad you're here."  
"I was leaving."  
"You want to go in? Maybe sit-"  
"No."  
"He would be glad-"  
"No, Genji."  
He is unconscious and he is not aware what is going on around him anyway, Hanzo wanted to say but forced himself not to. His brother sighed.   
"Can you at least take this to McCree's room, then?"  
He shoved everything he held into Hanzo's arms, and the archer was sure that if not for the fact his brother was recently acted mature he would add "make yourself useful, asshole" too. He would be right.  
"I... Can."  
"You know where he lives?"  
"The doors are tagged."  
Hanzo knew where the cowboy's room was, but he has never been inside. He was invited multiple times, always turning the propositions down, the vision of sitting with McCree in his private quarters seeming too intimate to take it. He wished he would be able to, though, and when he sneaked through the corridors he thought about what he saw and what he felt, and what he should have done there, but it was, again, too late for that. Now he stood right in front of Jesse's doors, forcing himself to speak.  
"Athena, could you open the door?"  
The small screen on the wall flickered when the AI spoke.  
"Agent McCree is currently in the medbay, agent Shimada."  
"I am well aware of that. I brought his things. Let me in."  
"I was informed your brother's going to come."  
"He did not, however, and he sent me instead."  
There was a moment of silence, Athena processing whether to let him in or not; finally, the door clicked.  
"I must ask you to spend there only the amount of time that is absolutely necessary, agent Shimada."  
"Of course. Thank you."  
Hanzo took a breath, fighting incredibly irrational jitters he suddenly felt and entered the room.  
McCree's quarters were a little bit bigger than his own, but on the other hand, it seemed smaller due to the number of things scattered all over the bedroom. It was messy, Hanzo could tell the cowboy has left in a hurry; with the clothes dragged across the floor, and the bed made only partially it all looked a bit peculiar. On his right, on the wall next to the half-open door to the bathroom was an obviously old poster with Clint Eastwood on it. Of course, what else he could expect. By the wall in front of him, there was a bed and a window and a guitar under it. The air faintly smelled like stale tobacco and whisky.   
The archer took his boots off and a little bit hesitantly went further, awkwardly tip-toeing not to step on anything.  
Everything in this room was exactly like McCree; worn out and a little bit dusty, but warm and cosy nonetheless. Hanzo stood by the bed, laid down McCree's bag and folded the serape perfectly, putting it on the sheets. He left the hat on top and sat.  
There were two empty whisky bottles on the floor under the bed, one filled to the brim with cigarette butts. The bedside table was full of various knickknacks, being one of the messiest parts of the room, and there were books on it, actual, paperback books, a bit archaic relic of the past. There were more of them on the desk and a few on the floor, but Hanzo could only read titles of the ones that were the closest to him.  
There were Steinbeck, King and Orwell and a battered issue of Poe just by the bed. Further away, scattered by and on the desk, were history books, quite a good number of them. Literature Hanzo would never in his life accused McCree of knowing, let alone owning paperback copies of them. They had to be crazily expensive and he had to hoard them all during last months because it was obvious he wasn’t dragging them around on the run.  
There were also photos on the bedside table, one of the gunslinger and Genji, one of him and some other man with black, trimmed beard; there was also a badly cropped, a bit blurry portrait photo of a bay horse. A small, sad potted cactus sat on the top of the pile of books, the top one being a particularly battered issue of Kerouac, along with several blisters and small jars of pills, which he didn’t want to investigate closer. It would be too much of him. Hanzo leaned closer and noticed the papers scattered on the table were, in fact, paper cranes.   
Ugly ones, unfortunately, made of gridded notebook paper, most likely by Genji- however there was one particularly disastrous, that was even under his brother's lack of manual skills. It was nice McCree at least tried, though.   
Hanzo shifted a little and felt something under his hand. He uncovered the blanket, only to discover a thick, rugged notebook. It laid open, with the cover up, and Hanzo hesitated for a second before the took it in his hands, nosiness be damned.  
The cover was a bit rough, made of leather, clearly by McCree himself. It had a leather strap as well, now untied, so he quickly went through the pages, overly aware of Athena probably taking a record of how long he sits in the room. Despite it, he took his reading glasses from the pocket; though he had a perfect sight on the far range, following small letters nearly right under his face was becoming harder and harder. He had been using glasses only since the beginning of the last year, anyway.  
Almost all of the pages were filled, and there were more loose pieces of paper at the end of the notebook. Hanzo nearly forgot he's in a hurry- there were stories written by the gunslinger's hand. Not only the cowboy ones, as far as Hanzo noticed without reading them properly. He decided to take his time to read the shortest one he could find, however. Just for the sake of it.  
It was incredibly well written, smart and witty, and it took him no time to go through it. He would read more if he had more time. Among the stories were also another entries- with dates, without titles and written completely in Spanish, but he could see some names he knew, his and Genji's among others, too. Journal notes without a doubt.   
Last filled pages were completely devastated. Whole lines of frantic text, whole paragraphs were struck out, two whole pages missing.  
He hasn't been well recently.  
McCree wasn't ill. He was utterly broken for the reason Hanzo could not decipher from Spanish.   
At the very end of the notebook, between the last page and the back cover, there was a small stack of loose paper filled completely with Jesse's writing. Only a peek of an eye was enough for Hanzo to acknowledge that he's, in fact, looking on letters. There were dates, some even from nine years ago but all from the last week of October or the first few days of November. A vast majority was in Spanish, pages of text addressed mostly to Reyes, several probably to McCree's mother, but there were some English ones as well; a few to someone called Amari and a few to Jack Morrison himself. Letters the cowboy was never meant to send- all of those people had to be long dead.  
There were also a few other letters, not much, on a different paper, with a different handwriting he knew all too well. The mediocre use of English also spoke for itself. The letters were from Genji.  
Hanzo suddenly slammed the notebook, realising what he was doing. He stood out abruptly, terrified by himself- one thing was his damned curiosity, but getting ready to read other people's private correspondence was something on a completely new level he absolutely didn't want to be close to. He left the notebook on the bed like he found it and left the room immediately.   
"Thank you, Agent Shimada."  
He heard Athena saying, but he was sure the AI made a note of how long he was inside.  
  
_"Dig, buddy, dig!"_  
Jesse glared at the calling men with bloody eyes but kept working with the shovel as he was told to. The sun was merciless, ground hard and cracked, the shovel barely digging in. If he's lucky, there's gonna be a rock underneath. If not, all the could hope for is that it would be a little bit cooler and wetter down the hole. Not that it would matter, he would be dead anyway.  
He hadn't had a decent meal in weeks and hadn't drunk a full glass of water in three days at least.   
There were impromptu gallows, noose tied on a plank hammered to the long-unused utility pole. McCree looked through the loop. It was his noose. And he was digging his own grave.  
It was his punishment for mostly false accusations of theft and treason. Well, the theft was right, he did steal several guns to sell them, but treason was a pure bullshit. He wasn't the type to do such a thing with his ridiculous, dog-like loyalty. But what happened happened, the situation was critical with the hideout compromised, and the sole fact fellow gang members found the time to execute him meant something.   
They were nervous, frantically moving all the cargo from the hidden warehouse to a few trucks, trying to put as much as they could on their bikes, making McCree dig in the dry soil instead of using him to help them. He would much prefer to do that.  
"Faster, bastard!"   
Barrel of his own gun pressed to the back of his head was cold against the unholy heat all around. The click of the hammer echoed loudly in his ears.  
But the sudden sound of several helicopters above them was way louder.   
The gang panicked in deep confusion, every single man around pulling out their gun, running around, shouting. And Jesse wasn't a dumb kid. Chaos was his ally.  
Quickly he turned around, swinging the shovel right into the temple of Ugly Joe, who had his gun. He jumped forward, blinded by fear, seeing men getting down from ropes hanging from the helicopters, wrenched his revolver back and ran for his life to a point he knew would be suitable for shooting a lot of people at once.  
White, cold light blinded him suddenly, and he grunted. He didn't remember looking straight into the sun.   
_The dull monotonous beeping of Mercy's medical equipment was the only sound audible in the silence between him and Genji, who was sitting in a chair beside the bed. It was kinda awkward, Jesse stubbornly looking on a white ceiling, Genji sitting with his arms crossed. He came over a while earlier, said "hey", what was quickly echoed by McCree, and on that, their interaction stopped. The cowboy was bounded to the bed for a good while now, woke up just two days or so earlier, although he wished he didn't._  
Nearly unable to move the upper left part of his body, with collarbone snapped in half and put together with screws and plates, dislocated shoulder and cracked bone in what he had left of his arm, as well as six broken ribs and some pretty severe burns, he had absolutely no need to talk with Genji. Only Mercy's medication kept him somewhat sane, in a sense that they clouded his mind and made him numb, and it was only the pain that kept him lying; he was terrified, nonetheless. At that very moment, death seemed a way more fair faith than what he had been offered.  
Six men were killed because of him, six men he was supposed to lead. And failed.  
Jesse McCree was a patient man.  
But his patience was running low.   
"You gonna act like that now?"   
His eyes snapped to Genji. If there wasn't something wrong with his spine too, he would turn his head.  
"All depressed? What a terrible thing happened to you, cowman, really, you lost an arm, cry me a river"  
Jesse McCree was a patient man.   
But God have mercy over the ones towards which he let himself lose it.  
"There are people who had it worse than you, Mc-"  
Gunslinger's vision gone red in less than a second, and the pain was gone and his sanity was gone too, when he raised from the bed, pulling all the cables, barely able to stand on his feet; there was a sound of something falling, but he ignored it just as he ignored pure, sheer fear in Genji's eyes, when he swung his only hand, punching him right in the face. Because of the sole size difference, McCree could kill him using nothing but brute force, and Genji was fully aware of that. Hopefully, he didn't really want to. Despite teasing Jesse in the past it never backfired to Genji with the cowboy actually attacking, let alone without any warning; he was capable and patient enough to deal verbally with Shimada’s barking.  
Cyborg's nose cracked and he fell off the chair, not even trying to fight back, just crawling away with hand pressed to his bloody face.  
"Why- why- I was... Never bad to you" McCree was staggering toward him, ready to attack again, blurting out blatant words, choking on his emotions, tears burning his eyes "I was always trying to help you, you spoiled son of a-"  
"McCree!"   
Angela's yell nearly woke him up from the blinding anger, and he lurched, almost crying, slumping along the wall, pain and weakness overpowering him again.  
"McCree-"  
Mercy's voice softened in his ears.  
"McCree, can you hear me?"  
Once again getting blinded by the irritating light he flinched and tried to speak, but his mouth was disgustingly, painfully dry, to the point that even when he swallowed he could feel the twinge in his nose. The beeping didn’t stop, just as annoying as it was before. It took him a while to feel a dull pain in his chest as well, followed by the terrible urge to cough which he stifled with all the will he had. He felt very sick, on the verge of throwing up.   
Blinking a few times and squinting he finally was able to acknowledge that he wasn't looking at the sun, but the medbay ceiling with a lamp on it. His right eye hurt also, badly, pain piercing up to the brain. He wanted to rub his face but was too weak to move.   
"Jesse?"  
He just made some random, quiet and very raspy sound, the only thing he was able to do. He was hoping for a more coherent answer, and so was Mercy, probably, but this was the best he could produce. God, his lids were heavy. So was his chest, and even though he was overly aware of the prongs of the air tube he had in his nostrils, that was mercilessly tingling him, he needed a long moment to realise how hard it is to actually breathe. When he tried to shift a little to change it, he was met with a sharper jolt of pain from the chest. With a clouded mind and pounding head, he was at least glad it was Mercy who spoke to him, not some rude bartender telling him to "get the fuck out of his bar". Well, he hoped it was the real Angela, not that he was seeing things again, especially that it all felt like he has nothing but a major hungover after a night when he got drunk and took part in a brutal fistfight.  
Where was he actually - and in what point in time- he had no clue.   
"It's alright. Take your time."  
Despite he felt even a little high, it hit him how gentle she was. If it was him on her place, first he would slap himself in the face to wake the fuck up, then pull up by the collar of his shirt. That was what he deserved because he wasn't made of paper, he didn't need such patience. But oh god, his lids were heavy. He was confused and tired, and he would sell his soul for a glass of water.   
"Rest, McCree. You’re going to be okay."  
He didn't have to be told that twice. He really wanted to to get back to sleep, where his dry mouth, nausea a and the unnerving feeling of not being able to get enough air to fill his lungs completely would be gone. His eyes were already closing, and he was dozing off, looking at the light above him again.  
_He remembered standing in his bathroom, leaning heavily on the sink, looking his reflection in the tired eyes. It was disgusting. He was disgusting, with useless thoughts writhing in his mind like maggots he couldn’t get rid of. And he couldn’t look at himself, and he wasn’t really thinking when his right fist smashed the mirror and his knuckles, he didn’t feel any pain at all. That came later, after he covered the spiderweb of cracks with the black towel, when he was trying to get rid of the glass in the sink and his flesh._  
The air was trembling from the heat, when he walked along the black, dusty road. Several pairs of eyes were looking at him on the bus. Bright, green neons of the gas station shining upon the red sky, and then nothing but the desert, the canyon, sand in his mouth and hopeless, pathetic run, Gabriel sitting on the rock shelf and the guilt, the knot in Jesse’s throat-   
And then the last thing he remembered, barrel of a gun aimed straight to Hanzo’s heart, and the dread that overcame him because yet another person was about to die solely because of him, a person that he truly cared about, and then there was nothing but pain and terrifying feeling of water filling his lungs, inability to take a proper breath, of choking and falling into nothingness, he remembered iridescent shine of blue scales, silky golden manes, and oh how he wanted to stop suffocating, and Hanzo, what about Hanzo, what happened to him, there was a copper taste of blood in Jesse’s mouth, the urge to cough the water, or blood, out, to stop feeling this at least, to die already, because he knew he was dying-  
“Wake up, McCree!”  
His eyes snapped open, and he wheezed and almost gagged, letting out a breath he didn’t even knew he was holding, and he had to hold it for quite some time judging by Mercy’s terrified face and the long and violent attack of painful cough that followed. Angela pulled him upright and held him through it, and when he finally was done, eyes teary from pain in the chest and copper taste in his mouth that almost made him throw up she let him lie down again. Panting he looked around, confused, and opened mouth to speak, but Angela was faster.  
“You’re in the med bay of the Gibraltar Overwatch Watchpoint, Jesse. It’s alright.”  
He wanted to answer with something witty, but his mind was like a tv static. The dream- or the nightmare, rather - clung to him hard, and he still couldn’t catch a proper breath with his lungs burning with pain.  
“Hanzo” he finally managed to blurt out, with a raspy voice “is he... fine?”  
“Yes, he is.” Mercy wrinkled her nose slightly but her face was unreadable. She frowned when McCree coughed again.    
“What-“  
“You got shot in the chest on a mission. Very... severely, to be frank, it’s nothing but an incredible amount of luck that you are still alive” she sighed, concerned “listen, McCree, I... your condition wasn’t particularly good even before the shooting. You were dehydrated, on the verge of a heatstroke and it seemed like you consumed nothing but alcohol for a good amount of time. What happened there? I mean, considering how you’ve been feeling recently...”  
“I don’t remember.” It wasn’t very nice of him to interrupt her like that,especially that he snapped, but he wanted to avoid the lecture, was finally able to make coherent sentences and he really wasn’t sure what happened back there. He would have to lie in the report. “How long I was out?”   
“Four and a half day.”  
The “Jesus Christ” gunslinger muttered under his breath was particularly irritated. He was tired and in pain, still, not that he'd like to admit that. But almost five days of being completely useless and sleeping was more than enough.  
“And you will stay here at least two days more.”  
“But I-“  
“But you almost suffocated yourself again in your sleep. And you really need rest, McCree. You were badly wounded, give yourself some time, please.”  
He grunted and moved, putting his hand on his chest, feeling the bandages and cables under his palm. He needed some water, he needed more sleep, and even though he was nauseous he was also very hungry. The unusual lightness of his stump told him he was lacking the prosthetic as well, what he found quite embarrassing. His head was pounding and keeping the eyes open hurt.   
“Try not to move too much, okay? Ideally, you should wake up tomorrow morning, but since you’re already conscious... you may want to keep sleeping in this half-seated position, it makes breathing easier, and don’t worry about your arm, Torbjörn has it. Some wiring needed to be renewed.”  
“Uh, so I guess at least I’ve lent him a hand while lying here, didn’t I?”  
Angela rolled her eyes so hard it was weird they didn’t pop out.  
“This joke was as bad as the disgusting condition of your lungs, McCree. Go to sleep so I can blame the morphine for making you a complete idiot.”  
“You’re tearing me apart!”  
It was pathetic how he mumbled it with a weak smile, watching her with heavy eyelids. But he blamed the morphine.  
“Yeah, professionally.”  
She grinned, but it was no doubt a worried grin and was already leaving when he stopped her.  
“Can I... can I get some water?”  
“No, not yet, I’m sorry.” She looked at him, now just with a pure worry and compassion “I can bring you a tiny bit though, so your mouth wouldn’t be too dry... I’m also gonna get Genji. He wanted to see you a lot.”  
She was doing it because she knew how much Jesse hated not the medbay itself but being alone with it with anything to do, and he was aware of that. And grateful, too.   
“Hey, Angie” he rasped, making her stop again “thank you. For patching me up. Saving my life again. And in general, too.”  
She smiled.  
“Would be easier for both of us if you didn’t put yourself in life-threatening situations” she crossed her arms “and stopped smoking.”  
“You know it ain’t gonna happen, either of it” the laugh McCree managed to let out was quite pathetic, making Mercy roll her eyes again “sorry, doc.”  
She just shook her head, smiling at him and left, leaving the gunslinger with his thoughts and the hum of her equipment.  
It felt like his eyelids were made of led, but he was afraid to fall asleep again, even though he hated to admit that. He moved his sore head and looked at the bedside table with blurry eyes, but had to squint to sharpen his vision. There were two paper cranes, elegantly, perfectly folded from the frosty silver paper; one of them was laying down, unable to stand, with a tiny paper attached to it. He wasn’t able to read it, though, still too weak to reach for it, but he thought for a while that it had to be Genji, suddenly acquiring crazy origami skills and very expensive looking paper, but then he didn’t think of it at all, weariness overcoming him completely, making him look at the beautiful birds with empty, teary eyes, and he finally fell asleep again. A sleep without any dreams saves for the memory of blue scales and the rumbling voices of their owners.  
  
“So you, like, witnessed it all first hand? All those conspiracy theories about what was going on in Blackwatch- holy, that must’ve been so cool!”  
D.Va’s high pitched voice was audible even in the corridor leading to the shooting range. Hanzo stopped, quite surprised, but continued walking after a while- usually he went there in different hours, and it was early evening, no wonder there were other people around, and he hoped it was Genji Hana was talking to.  
There was a soft chuckle. Not Genji’s.  
“Yea, wouldn’t say it was ‘cool’, but some o’ those theories might’ve been true”   
It definitely wasn’t Genji. Hanzo had time to just turn and leave, but he decided against it. He wasn’t at that level of cowardice, and he was, of course, disgustingly nosy.  
“Not the aliens tho, no. Never talked to ‘em, any of us.”  
“Damn, cowboy, it was my fav one!”  
There was more laughter, and Hanzo stopped again, not really ready to step into the patch of light that came out of the range’s windowed wall.  
“Actually, McCree, you’re pretty good with guns, right? I was talking to Mercy the other day and she told me to hit you up.”  
“Well, I’ll see what I can do, but you’re not a bad shooter yourself, missy.”  
“See, it’s the accuracy- it always gets a little to the left? It’s kind of weird.”  
“May I see the gun?”  
“It’s nearly the same that Mercy has-“  
“‘S the 50, it’s ten years newer but yeah, stinger nonetheless- even tho pretty heavily altered. They have the thing... all of them, they seem to be produced like that, weighed a lil' funky,  but this one, hm” McCree was silent for the moment, probably examining the weapon “show me how you hold it.”  
“Like that? And I know the projectiles have a delay, but-“  
“Mhm, ‘scuse me but delay’s not the problem; see, your finger’s a little too far on the trigger, it’s a common mistake tho, easy to correct really - don’t make that face, everybody does that at some point, so did I.”  
Hanzo has finally collected himself enough to step first into the patch of light, then to the doorframe of the shooting range. McCree was sitting on a crate of some sort, facing the door- he was cleaning the Peacekeeper of all the sand and didn’t really noticed Hanzo. Hana was sitting a little bit further and on the right, also on some type of cargo, in a sweatshirt so pink it burned his eyes.   
“Just try to keep only the fingertip on a trigger, that should do it.”  
That was the moment McCree lift his head and he smiled softly, eyes sparkling when he saw Hanzo leaning on the doorframe. D. Va jumped off the crate.  
“Will do, sheriff, but tomorrow” she went to the door and winked at Hanzo when the cowboy no longer saw her face “I have a stream to do now anyway. Remember you promised me to shoot some with your revolver!”  
She swiftly moved past the archer and disappeared in the corridor. They were left alone in very awkward silence, Hanzo just staring at the cowboy, unable to move. McCree washed his hair and trimmed his beard but he still had shadows under his eyes (right one red and bloodied) and his face still hasn’t returned to its colour. Hanzo knew this look all too well- the one of a man that just get out of a deep crisis and tried to keep everything together, all at once to make up for that whole time he was out. He couldn’t count how often he saw the same in the mirror. Jesse shifted and looked at him with those bright dog eyes and lazy smile and archer’s chest was burning with shame and longing he brought on him himself. He missed the cowboy. He really did. After Mercy told them all McCree woke up everybody, Zenyatta included, crashed to the med bay- everyone, but him. He had a sinking feeling he knew too much, they knew too much, and he didn’t want to confront the cowboy in front of all of them. Jesse stayed with Mercy for another few days, four or even five, he lost the count, to finally get out this morning.   
“‘S good to see you, Hanzo.”  
Peacekeeper’s cylinder clicked into place and Hanzo watched McCree closing the casket with gun cleaning supplies. He had to say something. He had to say something, he had to-   
“I am- I am going out. Would you like to join me?”  
He obviously wasn’t planning on leaving the building two seconds ago, but apparently, this was what he was working with now. Better than nothing. Worse than “it is good to see you too, I missed you a lot” though. There was a smile from the cowboy, a flash of canine, ivory teeth; he nodded, left peacekeeper on the crate and stood up. Slower than he would usually do, Hanzo noted, with squared shoulders and discreetly hunched. His metal arm limply hung by his side, like he didn’t even bother to flex his muscles enough to make it look like a functioning part of his body; his stride was shorter and more tired than it usually has been.   
They walked in silence - hard to say whether it was one of those comfortable or awkward silences - and when they left the buildings and walked out Jesse immediately put a cigarillo in his mouth, automatically lighting it, like it was an unconditional reflex. He had to stifle a cough after the first drag, shaking quite obviously; Hanzo noticed that but decided not to comment. So did McCree. The evening was nice, but the summer was coming to an end; cold breeze from the sea will soon turn into freezing, violent wind, getting as far from being as pleasant as possible. He looked up, just in the right moment to see two pairs of lights, one green and V-shaped and the other being five blue dots, disappear from the very edge of a cliff. Jesse came up to the railing, metal arm clanked when he leaned against it, looking at the lighthouse, smoking calmly. Hanzo stayed where he stopped.  
He wanted to say so much. A great number of words awaited to be let out, and yet he was silent. There was no good way of starting this talk.  
“Thank you, Hanzo. For helping me out there.”  
It was said when Jesse’s cigarillo was too short to hold, and he let the slightly smouldering butt fell into the water. He didn’t look at him though, hence Hanzo wasn’t sure if it was sincere or not; it didn’t matter anyway because the talk started and he had to answer.  
“You are welcome, McCree.” And then “what... happened out there?”  
He shouldn’t inquire. But he had to get this conversation to the point where he would feel safe. He did not feel safe at all.  
A quiet snort, flash of honey eyes looking at him, then at the lighthouse again.  
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. Sorry to disappoint ya.”  
There was something in his voice - something different than usual, something cold - like the sound that too thin ice makes when stepped on it. Hanzo should choose to retreat, but didn’t.   
“I think I owe you an apology.” He said, straightening up. McCree looked at him, confused, but it didn’t take long until there was the previous, stone cold expression on his face “For offending you before you left on the mission.”  
Jesse’s features softened, but only a tiny fraction.  
“Forget it. Long forgiven.”  
More silence. The dragons started to be impatient.  
Poor cowboy, dumb cowboy. He is yours, he is ours, let him know.  
“Is something... bothering you, McCree?” This was such a stupid question. They both knew the answer. He was sounding so artificial, so stiff, this talk had no order, no flow and no point; Jesse’s usual talkativeness would be beyond helpful right now, but there was none of it. Only overwhelming weariness.  
“I’ll be fine. No need to be concerned.”  
And yet he was.  
“Maybe you should... consider drinking less than you do.”  
Hanzo heard the sound of ice cracking before he finished the sentence that left his mouth unwanted and unplanned. He knew all well it was the worst thing he could say. He made a terrible mistake and it was confirmed when Jesse turned his head to him so fast his neck cracked a little.  
“Who the fuck do you think you are to lecture me about that” he barked loudly with raspy, dangerous voice, baring his teeth, for a split second looking like he wanted to bit through Hanzo’s neck like a wild dog “carrying your flask everywhere with you for everyone to see?”   
For a second he was utterly terrifying. “Never make the cowman mad,” Genji said to him once, “it’s very hard to do so, but you have abilities. I used to have them for sure, hopefully not anymore. Anyway, he is worse than angry Winston then.” Hanzo answered that he had seen an angry cowboy before, but Genji disagreed. “You had seen him annoyed at best.” And maybe he was right. Because what he saw must’ve been only a glimpse of an angry cowboy, and he definitely didn’t want to see it ever again.  
Jesse spat on the steel ground and looked at the sea again, this time rubbing his face with his flesh hand, muttering something along the lines of “‘m sorry.”  
I just want to help you, Hanzo wanted to say, but didn’t. Couldn’t. It wasn’t common to show affection through words; never in his life he told Genji he loved him. Their father never told them that, either; love, just like honour and respect, shows through one’s actions, not empty blabbering, but he was painfully aware it would not work with McCree.   
The breeze slowly transformed to a cold wind. It was getting late, some stars blinking above, partially dulled by the lights from the near city; and Hanzo regretted not taking a jacket with him. The lighthouse blinked rhythmically, time after time lightening up Jesse’s tough profile. Suddenly he unwrapped his serape from around his arms and handed it to Hanzo with straight, stiff hand, barely looking at him. When he spoke it was also carelessly muttered.  
“Take it. ‘S freshly washed, I ain’t got fleas or anythin’.”   
“I never thought you do.” Mumbled Hanzo, just as carelessly. He stood as he was before, awkwardly holding the red wool. “What about you?”  
“My shirt’s warm enough.”  
It looked like it. It was worn and the flannel long faded, but it fit. On anyone else, it would’ve looked straight up ugly.  
“Why do you dress like that? Why this ridiculous attire?” That was the most useless question Hanzo could ask right now. But it was only the safest.  
“Ain’t no point in denying who I am.” He answered, shrugged, and finally looked at the archer.  
They locked their gazes. Gunslinger’s eyes were tough but less cold than before.  
“And who are you, Jesse McCree?”  
There was a short silence.  
“A son of an immigrant born and raised without a father on a farm not far from Santa Fe, herding cattle and attending Sunday school till he was 10. Now a mercenary at whom all looks only through the barrel of his gun, one way or another.” He answered, simply, the last bits of coldness disappearing from his face, replaced by this piercing honesty Hanzo was way too familiar with.  
He looked like he wanted to continue, but Hanzo didn’t let him.  
“You are much more than that.” He said. Jesse’s expression changed to something slightly surprised.  
Grounded God of the desert sun, seethed the Dragons.  
And however overly parabolic turgid they got, Hanzo agreed with them.  
Jesse McCree was a dangerous man. He could clearly remember how cautious Jesse was when he came to Gibraltar for the first time. The cowboy was incredibly polite, yes, but Hanzo could see his hand slipping to peacekeeper’s holster and the slightest of warnings in his eyes every time he was around. With a sharp mind and sharper wit, ridiculous talent to observe and then tell what he saw. Jesse McCree was a great soldier with unrivalled aim and good tactical thinking; outrageously intelligent and well behaved to add to it. Unfortunately obscenely handsome, sometimes too cheerful.  
And unnecessary humble.  
Hanzo didn’t say any of this things. He hooked the cowboy in the middle with his own serape and pulled him in into a hug. And it was a desperate hug, he was grabbing to the serape and cowboy’s shirt, and after a moment of Jesse’s surprised stiffness, Hanzo felt his arms returning the embrace. McCree cradled him enough to feel the cowboy’s breath on the top of his head. It took them a while, standing like this, and Hanzo felt the softness and warmth of the cowboy like never before, and it was unspeakably reassuring, even though he heard the gunslinger’s rapid heartbeat.  
“I am glad,” he said, “ I am very glad you are alive, Jesse.”  
He felt more than heard a soft rumble in cowboy’s chest.  
“It will take more than that.”  
Hanzo raised his head, deliberately, hoping that Jesse would not turn his face away. He didn’t.   
Their noses brushed, and cowboy’s beard tickled Hanzo’s mouth. They kissed and it was a soft, sweet kiss, almost languid; it tasted like McCree’s cigarillo and was so sincere and honest it took Hanzo’s breath away.   
It seemed like ages passed when they finally parted, but it also seemed like it was not enough. They stood, closely embraced, and none of them seemed to want to move.  
“Thank you,” said Jesse softly, with an audible smile “for the cranes.”  
Hanzo hummed. One night he just sat by Jesse’s bed, folding the paper birds and muttering, more to himself than to Jesse.  
“I am sorry I was not able to visit you... properly.”   
“S’all fine, Genji said you were busy.”   
Even though not really willingly, he had to maintain the lie. It was easier this way.  
Still closely embraced, they came closer the railing and looked at the sea.  
“You tried to run away, Jesse. Die, rather than go to a prison. Why?”  
A shrug and a moment of silence.  
“Sometimes your freedom is all you have.” He made a long pause. “I- I will do it again. Run. ‘S just something that I do.”   
“Then let me go with you.”  
Silence. A small smile appeared on Jesse’s face, then there was a chuckle, and it was hard to tell if he nodded or his head just dropped. When he looked at Hanzo again he spoke no words, but he didn’t have to. His eyes were telling enough.   
More silence. A comfortable one, though. There was a cargo ship on the water, slowly passing them; without the lighthouse, it looked like several points of light.  
“I always wonder,” said Hanzo quietly and low, with almost purring voice, and pointed at the beacon on tiny, rock island  “What the lighthouse keeper must think, seeing the military base, abandoned and locked down, getting alive at night?”  
Jesse smiled.  
“They’re an omnic, real old one. From back when they programmed them pretty... sparely, so to say. They only seem to care about the lighthouse, lightening it up to the clock. We never had any problems with ‘em.”  
Hanzo hummed on that.  
"And the ships?"  
"Not give a shit either" Jesse shrugged. " The lights facing the water are usually off,  and Winston has some... disorienting gadgets which, probably, work." A moment of silence. "Can I ask you something, Hanzo?"  
"Hm, yes."  
" Do your dragons... talk?"  
"Why?"  
"I've always been curious," said Jesse simply.  
"They... might," Hanzo answered, carefully choosing words "but only to me. Or My brother, I have heard his once."  
 McCree only nodded to that. He seemed to be pleased with this answer.

They stood like that for a long time, embraced, eyes locked on the sea, on the ships, the horizon and the lighthouse. The evening turned into night when they decided to get back inside.  
"You wanna tell'em?"  
"They are not blind, neither are they stupid," Hanzo said calmly. "They will know."  
They went down the stairs, through the cracked concrete, into the cave-like passage.  
"Where are you going to go next?" asked Hanzo "since you do not have to travel alone anymore?"  
There was a fond hum.  
"Mine is the desert," said the gunslinger, "and I'm gonna make use of it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> __[All the spirits that I know I saw](https://youtu.be/h6JXVVNDwQw)  
>  Do you see no ghost in me at all?  
>   
> Well, this was quite a ride, wasn’t it! Have I proofread this chapter other than checking it with my one and only beta, the Grammarly app? Of course not...  
> I have had this done for quite some time, to be honest. But I've started the university, got distracted by several AUs I wrote other small ficlets to (which may or may not make an appearance here, but ONLY when they are all done this time; making y'all wait is making me stressed lol) and had a major fear with disappointing you with the last chapter. But there I am, still distracted, still stressed, but at least i brought... this.  
> As I said multiple times this is the very first piece of my writing I ever published. Not having good experiences with sharing my writing from back when i was a kid I was almost traumatised to do so but BECAUSE OF SOME PEOPLE this fanfic is here??? so maybe let me do the oscar thing and let me thank  
> [Aga](http://dziewanna.tumblr.com/) for being the first person to push me into publishing this mess, and  
> [ Kojotek](http://kojottek.tumblr.com/) for being the biggest fan and cheerleader of this fanfic even and bullied me to finish what I started and post this last chapter, it's all on her  
>   
> Anyway, thank you all for sticking till the end! hope you are not disappointed! (also if you know how else could i tag this work hmu please)  
> And uh, if You'd like to get some more writing from me I will be more than happy to deliver... sometime... but for now, as always, you can catch me on my  
> [tumblr](http://vrronska.tumblr.com/)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/vrronska)  
>   
> [here's a bonus picture of Jesse and his mom!](http://vrronska.tumblr.com/post/174278963843/mama-mccree-a-very-old-like-a-year-i-think)


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